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LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY Cm
CAUfORNIA
SANTA CRUZ
\ ■
PS
3SZI
-138
mi
V.I
JOYCE KILMER
POEMS, ESSAYS
AND LETTERS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME ONE: MEMOIR AND POEMS
© l-;:knl-OM M.I U:,d
JOYC1-: KIL.MER. AGE 3
JOYCE KILMER
lit
EDITED WITH A MEMOIR
BY ROBERT CORTES HOLUDAY
VOLUME ONE
MEMOIR AND POEMS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1914, 1917, 1918
By George H. Doran Company
Pbinted in the United States of Amebica
TO THB MEMORY OF
JOYCE EILMEB
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Smart Set, Munsey's Magasme and Puck —
a curiously assorted company, highly expressive of
the catholicity of the mind these pages reflect.
The article on Hilaire Belloc, originally one of
Kilmer*s lectures, was first printed in the American
edition of Belloc*s "Verses." The early poems have
been chosen from Kilmer's first book, "A Summer
of Love," now out of print, rights to which are held
by Mrs. Aline Kilmer. Poems not otherwise cred-
ited have been reprinted from the volumes already
published by George H. Doran Company.
R. C» S*
New York, 1918.
•••
VIU
CONTENTS VOLUME ONE
PAQB
Meiioib IT
POEMS FROM FRANCE
Rouge Bouquet 106
The Peacemaker 108
Prayeb of a Soldieb in France 109
When the Slstt-ninth Comes Back 110
Mirage du Cantonment 118
POEMS AT HOME
Wartime Christmas. 117
Main Street 118
Roofs WO
The Snowman in the Yard 12«
A Blue Valentinb 124
Houses 127
In Memory 128
Apology 181
The Proud Poet 188
Lionel Johnson , 187
Father Gerard Hopkins, S.J 188
Gates and Doors * 189
The Robe of Christ 142
The Singing Girl 145
The Annunciation 146
Roses 147
The Visitation 149
Multiplication 150
Thanksgiving 152
The Thorn 158
•
IX
CONTENTS
PAOB
The Big Top 154
Mid-ocean in War-tpob 157
QiTEEN Elizabeth Speaks 158
In Memory of Rupert Brooke 159
The New School ': 160
Eaoter Week 168
The Cathedral of Rhedhs 165
Kings 169
The White Ships and the Red 170
The Twelve-Forty-Five 174
Pennies 178
Trees 180
Stars 181
Old Poets 188
Delicatessen 185
Servant Girl and Grocer's Boy 190
Weai^th 192
Martin 198
The Apartment House 194
As Winds That Blow Against a Star 196
St. Laurence 197
To A Young Poet Who Killed Himself 198
Memorial Day 200
The Rosary 201
Vision 202
To Certain Poets 208
Love's Lantern 205
St. Alexis 206
Folly 208
Madness 210
Poets 211
CinzEN of the World 1^12
X
CONTENTS
PAQB
To A Blackbird AND His Mate Who DiEDiN THE Sfrino 218
The Foubth Shepherd 215
Easter 218
Mount Houvenkopp 219
The House with Nobody in It 220
Dave Lillt 228
Alarm Clocks « 226
Waveblet 227
EARLY POEMS
In a Book-shop 281
Slender Your Hands 282
Sleep Song 288
White Bird of Love 284
Transfiguration 286
Ballade of My Ladt's Beaxttt 287
For a Birthday 289
Wayfarers 242
Princess Ballade 244
Lullaby for a Baby Fairy 246
A Dead Poet 248
The Mad Fiddler 249
The Grass in Madison Square 251
Said the Rose 252
Metamorphosis 254
For a Child 255
The Clouded Sun (To A. S.) 256
The Poet's Epitaph 259
Beauty's Hair 260
The Way of Love 262
Chevely Crossing 267
The Other Lover < 270
•
ILLUSTRATIONS
Joyce Ejlmeb, Aob SO Frontispiece
FaOSIMILE of AUTOQRAFH ICANUSCRIPT OF *ThE
Peacemaker ** 108
Joyce Ejlmeb» Age 91 240
siB
/
lilEMOIR
MEMOIR
IT IS the felicity of these pages that they cannot
be dull. It is their merit, peculiar in such a
memoir, that they cannot be sad. It is their novelty
that they can be restricted in appeal only by the
varieties of the himian species* It is their good
fortune that they can be extraordinarily frank. It
is their virtue that they cannot fail to do unmeasur-
able good. And it is their luck to abide many days.
With their subject how could it be otherwise?
They make not a wreath, but a chronicle, and in
their assembled facts tell a bright chapter in the his-
tory of our time. If there is one word which more
than any other should be linked with the name of
this gaUant figure now claimed (and rightly) by so
many elements of the nation, that word certainly is
"American." A character and a career so racy,
typical of all that everybody likes to believe that at
our best we are, can hardly be matched, I think, out-
side of stories.
I
Joyce Kilmer was reported in the papers as hav-
ing said, just before he sailed for France, that he
was "half Irish," and that was why he belonged with
[17]
MEMOIR
•
the boys of the Sixty-ninth. His birth was not ex-
actly eloquent of this fact. Though, indeed, he was,
as will appear, a much more ardent Irishman than
many an Irishman born — ^that is, in the sense of
keenly savouring those things which are fine in the
Irish character, and with characteristic gusto feel-
ing within himself an affinity with them. Later, in
a letter from France to his wife, he was more ex-
plicit on this point:
As to the matter of my own blood (you men-
tioned this in a previous letter) I did indeed tell a
good friend of mine who edits the book-review page
of a Chicago paper that I was "half Irish^ ' But I
have never been a mathematician. The point I
wished to make was that a large percentage — ^which
I have a perfect right to call half — of my ancestry
was Irish. For proof of this, you have only to refer
to the volumes containing the histories of my moth-
er's and my father's families. Of course I am
American, but one cannot be pure American in
blood unless one is an Indian. And I have the good
fortune to be able to claim, largely because of the
wise matrimonial selections of my progenitors on
both sides, Irish blood. And don't let anyone pub-
lish a statement contrary to this.
He also, in a letter from France, quoted with
much reUsh the remark of Father Francis P. Duffy
[18]
MEMOIR
that he was ^'half Grerman and half human/*
English and Scotch strains made up another half
or three quarters. The English goes straight back
to one Thomas Kilbume, church warden at Wood-
dilton, near Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, who
came to Connecticut in 1638. The "e" was lost
apparently in Massachusetts, and the word became,
as in his mother's maiden name, Eilbum.
Soldier blood, too, flowed in his veins — though it
is likely that this fact for the first time occurred to
him, if at all, when his nature rose white-hot to
arms. He was, so to say, a Colonial Dame on both
sides, as members of both his father's and his moth-
er's family fought in the American Revolution; and
members of his father's family in the French and
Indian wars.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer (as he was christened) was
bom at New Brunswick, New Jersey, December 6,
1886, son of Annie Kilbum and Frederick Kilmer.
Though he seems always to have been, in familiar
address and allusion, called Joyce, the Alfred did
not disappear from his address and signature until
he began, as more or less of a professional writer,
to publish his work, when it went the way of the
Newton in Mr. Tarkington's name, and the Enoch
in Mr. Bennett's. Then ''Joyce Kilmer" acquired a
[19]
/
MEMOIR
fine humorous disdain for what he regarded as the
florid note in literary signatures of three words (or,
worse still to his mind, the A. Joyce kind of thing) ;
and he enjoyed handing down, with much relish of
the final and judicial character of his utterance, the
opinion that the proper sort of a trademark, so to
say, for success in letters was something short,
pointed, easy to say and to remember, such as Rud-
yard Kipling, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Joseph
Conrad, and so on through illustrations carried, at
length, to intentionally infuriating nimibers.
As a small boy, Kilmer is described by those who
knew him then as the "funniest" small boy they
ever saw, by which is meant, apparently, that he was
an odd spectacle. And this, of course, is so alto-
gether in line with literary tradition that it would
have been odd if he had not been an oddity in the
way of a spectacle. He wore queer clothes, it seems,
ordinary stockings with bicycle breeches, and that
sort of thing. He didn't altogether fit in somehow,
couldn't find himself, was somewhat of an outsider
among the juvenile clans; he was required to fight
other boys a good deal ; he evidenced a pronounced
inability to comprehend anything at all of arith-
metic; and somewhere between eight and twelve (so
the report goes) he contracted a violent passion for
[20]
MEMOIR
a lady, of about thirty-five, who was his teacher at
school; a passion which endured for a considerable
time, and became a hilarious legend among the
youth about him of jocose himiour.
It is told that at "Prep" school, when this goal
seemed rather imlikely of his attainment, he made
up his mind to stand at the head of his class; and
with something like the later Kilmerian exercise of
wiU he accompHshed his purpose.
Kilmer was graduated from Rutgers College in
1904, and received his A. B. from Colimibia in 1906.
His University life seems to have been, in outward
eflFect, fairly normal. There is no ready evidence
that he "shone" particularly, and none that he failed
to "shine." He was not deported by the authorities,
and he was not unanimously hailed the idol of his
classmates. He became a member of Delta Upsilon
fraternity: and he was, of course, active in college
journalism. Then as always he appears to have
been zestful in living well, to have counted sufiicient
to the day the excellence thereof, and to have been
too T^arm with life to be calculating in expenditures.
He retained in the years that followed — ^and it
seems to have been the college memory he retained
most distinctly— a humorous recoUection of his con-
suming his aUowance on an abundance of rich
[21]
MEMOIR
viands during the first few days of each month, and
being reduced to the necessity of Kving precariously
on a meagre ration of crackers and sandwiches
thereafter — ^until next income day.
Characteristic of the vehement manner in which
he went after life, as a Sophomore Kilmer became
engaged to Miss Aline Murray, of New Jersey, a
step-daughter of Henry Mills Alden, editor of
Harper's Magazine. Upon leaving Colimibia he
took up the business of making a living in the way
of an elder American intellectual tradition, by
teaching school in a (more or less ) nu^al community.
He returned to NeV Jersey and began his career as
instructor of Latin at Morristown High School.
So slight a lad he was, even several years after this
time, that it is difficult to picture him in the discip-
linary adventures of the classic figiu'e of this call-
ing. His problems at Morristown doubtless were
dissimilar to those of his early, Hoosier, prototype.
He married and became a householder. His son,
Kenton, was bom. In religion he had been bred an
Episcopalian, and during this period in New Jersey
(it is told) he acted as a lay reader in this church.
He soon concluded, apparently, that pedagogy
was, so to say, no life for a boy. At the conclusion
of a year's teaching he tore up the roots he had
[22]
MEMOIR
planted, and, together with the young lady he had
married, and the son bom to them, and with a few
youthful poems in his pocket, he advanced upon the
metropolis, even in the classic way, on the ancient
quest of conscious talent.
The rapidity and brilliance of Joyce Kihner's
success has altogether obscured his very democratic
beginnings. As his initial occupation in New York,
he obtained, by a lucky chance, employment as
editor of a journal for horsemen, though of horses
he had no particular knowledge — ^to be exact, no
such knowledge whatever. Here finding httle to
do, and discovering one day in a desk drawer a
bulky manuscript, he decided — as he was editor — ^to
edit it. This, apparently, he did with youthful en-
ergy. The little job he mentioned with some satis-
faction to his employed, a fine portly sportsman
with a crimson face and an irascible temper. The
young editor explained that the manuscript evi-
dently had been written by a man familiar with
horses, but one apparently innocent of the art of
literary composition. "Young man," beUowed his
employer, "I would have you understand I have
been through the best veterinary coUege in the
world, and I have been a veterinary myself for over
forty years." His wife, he added, was his amanu-
[23]
MEMOIR
ensis, and he guessed she knew something about
^ting. The editorship came to an abrupt termi-
nation.
Then followed a brief sojourn, at a salary of (I
think ) eight dollars a week, as retail salesman in the
book store of Charles Scribner's Sons, a dignity
which the young litterateiu* wore with himiorous
dignity for exactly two weeks. A distinct mental
impression of him of this time presents him as decid-
edly like an Eton boy in general eflFect, and it seems
that a large white collar and a small-size high hat
should have gone with him to make the picture quite
right. One who met him then felt at once a gra-
cious, slightly courtly, young presence. He gave
forth an aroma of excellent, gentlemanly manners.
He frequently pronounced, as an indication that he
had not heard you clearly, the word "Pardon?" —
with a slight forward incKnation of his head, which,
altogether, was adorable. His smile, never far
away, when it came was winning, charming. It
broke like spring sunshine, it was so fresh and warm
and clear. And there was noticeable then in his eyes
a light, a quiet glow which marked him as a spirit
not to be forgotten. So tenderly boyish was he in
eflFect that his confreres among the book clerks ac-
cepted with diflSculty the story that he was married.
[24]
MEMOIR
When it was told that he had a son they gasped their
incredulity. And when one day this extraordinary
elfin sprite remarked that at the time of his honey-
moon he had had a beard they felt (I remember)
that the world was without power to astonish them
further.
As a retail salesman, however, this exceedingly
interesting young man did not make a high mark.
One's general impression of him "on the floor" is a
picture of a happy student, standing, entranced,
frequently with his back to the (ioor (which theoret-
icaUy he should have been watching for incoming
customers), day after day engrossed in perusing a
rare edition of "Madame Bovary." One sensational
feat of business he did as a clerk perform. Mis-
reading, in his newness to these hieroglyphics, the
cypher in which in stores the prices of books are
marked on the fly leaves of the volimaes, he sold to a
lady a himdred-and-fifty-dollar book for a dollar
and a half. This transaction being what is termed a
"charge sale," not a "cash sale," and amid some ex-
citement the matter being immediately I'ectified, dis-
aster for the amateur salesman was averted. -
At Scribner's a close friendship was, almost at
once, formed between the youthful poet and another
then unpublished writer acting at that time in the
[25]
MEMOIR
same capacity of clerk — ^a friendship which was
never diminished by the nimierous shif tings of Kil-
mer's pelds of activity, the multitudinous, diverse
and ardent interests which he acquired in an ever-
mounting measure, and the steady addition of num-
berless friends of all classes who eagerly yielded him
their devotion. It was rather a friendship which
was continually cemented by increasing and closer
bonds. It was a part of Kilmer's spirit to make his
first friend in his literary life a sharer as far as was
possible in each new success of his own. One among
many, inmrnierablCj instances of this was his con-
triving, by his influence with the editor (at that time
another intimate, Louis H. Wetmore), to work his
friend into a position somewhat rivaling his own at
the period (1912-1913) when he was the bright and
shining star reviewer for the New York Times Me-
view of Books. The regular Tuesday lunching to-
gether of these two friends when their offices were
widely separated became, at least in their own
fancy, an American literary institution. The two
were united in aU the symbols of affection between
men. And at seasons of rejoicing and adversity the
Kilmer house was to his friend as his own. It is to
this one who among all of Joyce Kilmer's friends
owes him the greatest debt of friendship has come
[26]
MEMOIR
the supreme trust of writing, within the power of his
many and conscious limitations, this Memoir, and
editing these volumes.
Dropping the very small bird which he held in his
hand in the way of a secure salary, the spectacular
bookseller, somewhat to twist the figure, plunged
again into uncharted seas, and became a lexico-
grapher, as an editorial assistant in the work of pre-
paring a new edition of the Standard Dictionary.
He blithely began his Johnsonian labours by defin-
ing ordinary words assigned to him, at a pay of five
cents for each word defined. This is a very differ-
ent thing indeed from receiving a rate of five cents
a word for writing. It is a task at which you can
obtain an average of perhaps ten or twelve dollars
a week, though some weeks "stickers" will hold you
back. It soon became apparent, evidently, that it
was advisable to put this very capable pieceworker
on a salary ; and he was rapidly promoted, with cor-
responding increases in remuneration (reaching an
amount of something like four times his initial earn-
ings), to more advanced phases of the work: re-
search into dates of birth (involving correspondence
with living celebrities) ; research into the inception
of inventions (as, for example, the introduction of
the barrier into horse racing) ; together with the
[27]
MEMOIR
defining of words of contemporary origin, in, for in-
stance, the nomenclature of aviation. In this last
mentioned department, it was his oflSce to call upon
authorities, such as the Wright brothers, and upon
presentation of his credentials to receive precise in-
formation. He interviewed famous tobacco im-
porters, and coffee merchants ; compiled in the New
.York Public Library material about fans; un-
earthed for use as an illustration a picture of a
strange bird ; or was assigned to collect for this pur-
pose designs of ancient mouldings.
If lexicography was Kilmer's venerable occupa-
tion, by political faith he was at the time, this very
young, young man, a sociahst. He subscribed for
and frequently contributed to the Call newspaper.
And the height of his effervescence was in address-
ing meetings of the proletariat. He was, it must
be said, a burning ''joxing radical." He fre-
quented, to some extent, a club of that name. And
with a joyous consciousness of being in the char-
acter of his surroundings he ate meals at the Rand
School of Social Science. He rapidly acquired
a wonderful string of queer acquaintances, in
whose idiosyncrasies he took immense delight.
Some, not of the persuasion, fancied that as an ad-
herent of the socialist party he was merely enam-
[28]
MEMOIR
oured of an intellectual idea. At any rate, when-
ever in conyersation he spoke of socialism, as he
frequently did, his graceful, amiable young feat-
ures assumed a very firm and earnest aspect.
Exactly the point of transition, if there was any
decided point, I cannot recall, but from the proleta-
riat he passed to the literati. A "man of letters" be-
came a great word with him. And he looked rather
proudly about as he said it, as a Scot might speak
of the doughty deeds of the Scotch. He was wont
to refer, too, to the "intellectual aristocracy." His
luncheon engagements were now mostly with this
order of himianity, and his anecdotes featured such
figures as Richard Le Gallienne and Bliss Carman
— men whose personalities delighted his heart be-
yond measure.
How absurdly juvenile he looked. But you would
have noted, as you observed him, that he had a very
fine head, something like that of Arthur Symons
(without the moustache), I thought; or, according
to Mr. Le Gallienne's sympathetic picture in The
Bookman: "Though the resemblance was perhaps
only a spiritual expression, his then thin, austere
young face, with those strangely strong and gentle
eyes (eyes that seemed to have an independent,
dominating existence), reminded me of Lionel
[29]
MEMOIR
Johnson, for whom he had abeady a great adoura*
tion, and whose religion he was afterwards to em-
brace." Or, again, he seemed as if he might be a
comely youth oul; of ancient Greece, I think that
what I mean is that he was so milike aU other yomig
men anyone had ever seen walking about, so much
brighter and purer, or some indescribable thing,
that he did not seem altogether reaL A feeling
which I think was shared by many, and which I
have never quite been able to make articulate, Mr,
Le Gallienne has most happily expressed with hiid
own easy charm; that is the "hint of destiny" in this
"very concentrated, intense young presence — mas-
culine intense, not feminine:"
We have all met young people who give us that
— ^beautiful, brilliant, lovely natured, so superabun-
dant in all their qualities (and particularly perhaps
in some quality of emanating light) — as to make
them suggest the supernatural, and touched, too,
with the finger of a moonlight that has written
"fated" upon their brows. Probably our feeling is
nothing more mysterious than our realisation that
temperaments so vital and intense must inevitably
tempt richer and swifter fates than those less wild
winged.
Above all, this young gentleman was the portrait
of a poet, even (in those days) of the type of liter-
[80]
MEMOIR
uy sophistication which is (or was) called deca-
dent I There was about him a perceptible aroma of
literary self -consciousness. He had begun to con-
tribute to magazines and newspapers the verses
which he soon gathered into a first volume, "A
Summer of Love" (an "author's book," as the trade
term has it) , verses patently derivative in character
(as whose early verses are not?), showing the in-
fluences of various masters.
He had already become a bit of a celebrity, ar-
riving at twenty-five in ?FAo'« ?FAo. In conversa-
tion he spoke with striking fluency and precision,
and a rather amusing effect of authority; all of
which, together with a ready command, rather in-
congruous for his years, of very apt words little em-
ployed in speech, gave a general impression, I
fancy, of something of an infant prodigy. He
wrote in a letter of this time of the poems of Cov-
entry Patmore :
I have come to regard them with intense admira-
tion. Have you read them? Patmore seems to me
to be a greater poet than Francis Thompson. ( Kil-
mer, had by the way, just given a lecture at Co-
lumbia University on Francis Thompson. ) He has
not the rich vocabulary, the decorative erudition,
the Shelleyan enthusiasm, which distinguish th^
''Sister Songs" and the "Hound of Heaven," but
[81]
MEMOIR
he has a classical simplicity, a restraint and sincerity
which make his poems satisfying. Some of his
shorter poems, such as "Alexander and Lycon" and
"The Toys," approach Landor in their Greek econ-
omy. Of com'se, the "Angel in the House," and
many other of his poems, are marred by Tennyson-
ian influences. But the "Unknown Eros" is a work
of stupendous beauty. It is certainly supreme
among modem religious poems. That part of it
devoted to Eros and Psyche is remarkably daring
and remarkably fine. Psyche symbolizes the soul,
and Eros the love of God. Their amour is de-
scribed with reaUstic minuteness, even with humor-
ous flippancy, and yet the whole poem is alive with
religious feeling.
The finding of Patmore, by the way, was what
might be called a finger-post in Kilmer*s life. The
fortunate introduction was performed by, it is my
impression, Kilmer's friend Thomas Walsh.
If in cold print to-day there is a slightly prepos-
terous didactic quality in these remarks of this
youthful character, it should be instantly noted as
a tribute to the charm that was his that in the pres-
ence of so much handsomeness and grace, combined
with so much flexibility of mind and agile himiour,
even this was an engaging thing.
There was to Kilmer nothing whatever dry-as-
[82]
MEMOIR
dust about the erudite business of lexicography;
instead his impressionable nature found among his
co-workers a rich, a colourful, an exciting school of
humanity. He glowed continually with affection-
ate amusement at the motley band of literary ad-
venturers, intellectual soldiers of fortune, who ap-
parently were his colleagues. One, the most motley
perhaps of all (the long cherished dream of whose
ancient bachelor life it was one day to write a pop-
ular song) , touched, for the first time, I think, the
deepest spring of his song— his profound and wide-
ranging humanity.
Some people ask: *'VVhat cruel chance
Made Martin's life so sad a story?*'
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance.
And wore an overcoat of glory.
II
And then, lol the aesthete became a churchman.
After a couple of years or so pf lexicographic em-
ployment, work on the dictionary was completed,
and Kilmer entered what, with immense gusto, he
described as '^reUgious journalism." He became
literary editor of The Churchman.
He had completed a very thorough course in up-
town New York apartment house life (living, I
[88]
MEMOIR
think, in rapid succession in some half dozen speci-
mens of "the great stone box cruelly displayed
severe against the pleasant arc of sky") ; and now
removing to the suburban village of Mahwah, New
Jersey, in the Ramapo foothills, he entered upon his
career as one of the world's most accomplished com-
muters. He used to say, with a spacious gesture of
the arm and a haughty inflation of the chest, that it
was no life at all, no life at all, for a man not to
swing around an orbit of at least sixty miles a day
between his office and his home. His home, even so I
I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to
roam
All up and down the streets of the world and not to
have a home.
. What more exhilarating experience than the
owning of a home I And one paid one's installments
on the biiilding loan with the fine pride of a man
exercising a noble prerogative. Yes, he often
walked to Suffem along the Erie track, and medi-
tated on "what a house should do, a house that has
sheltered life,"
That has put its loving xwooden arms around a man
and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up
his stumbling feet.
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As became a churchman, he began to hold forth to
his companion on the train to and from the city on
the fascinations of the Anglican poets. Either his
enthusiasm for the subject resulted in a series of
articles on the theme, or an assignment for such a
series of articles resulted in his enthusiasm, I don't
know which. The significant point is tiiat it was
just as like to have been either way about. 'Tasson
Hawker" — ^Robert Stephen Hawker — ^Vicar of
Morwenstow, a coast life-guard in a cassock — ^who
can recite off hand the deeds of his piety and his
valour ? Well, on the Erie smoker he became one of
the most romantic figures of story. Robert Her-
rick, in a manner of speaking, went home many a
night on the Twelve-Forty-Five (Robert Herrick,
that is, with his "Unbaptized Rhimes'* left out),
and Bishop Coxe returned on the Seven«Fifty-Six
in the morning.
Kilmer had already done a few book reviews for
The Nation and for the New York Times; but at
The Churchman he acquired such a proficiency at
this exercise that he was able, jocularly, to regard
Arnold Bennett, as a literary journalist, as a ""mere
amateur." The real reward of "religious journal-
ism,*' however, it soon developed, was the oppor-
tunity of writing a feature which the secular might
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call an editorial, but the proper name of which this
editor pronounced, in the tone and with the manner
of one who was consciously engaged in something
grand, gloomy and peculiar, as a "meditation."
The real meditations of Joyce Kilmer, however,
were not "meditations" so called, and partook in no
wise of the nature of editorials. He had been, in the
main, a graceful troubadour who thrummed pleas-
ant things to his lady-love, and had a bright eye to
his singing robes. He had thought it rather fine,
too, that refrain in imitation of Richepin:
May booze be plenty, bulls be few.
The poet is the beggars' king.
He had even been much taken, artistically, with the
thought of absinthe:
O little green god in your crystal shrine.
Your heavenly dream-shower shed I
It was when his business took him near to Grod,
when his exploring spirit, upon a peak in Darien,
beheld that :
Poems are made by fools like me.
But only God can make a tree,
that he began to be a poet. "Trees," which more
than all the rest he had written put together made
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lus reputation, appeared in Poetry ^ A Magazine of
Verse in August, 1913.
At about this period it was that he was altogether
bom again. Then, doubtless in eastigatory reaction
against his own aesthetic and ^'decadent'' wild oats»
entered into his fibre that sovereign disdain for the
intellectual flub-dub which later gave such a de-
lightful note of "horse-sense" to all his humor*
ous thought — ^the Johnsonian sting ("and don't you
ttink you were an ass?") which found its earhest
biting expression in the verses "To a Young Poet
Who Killed Himself."
"I Ve been leading a rather active life, for several
days," was with a gay salute of the hand, a fre-
quent Kilmerian remark. In 1912 the direction of
the New York Times Review of Books fell into the
hands of a high-spirited young man, a Max-Beer-
bohmian character, with a decided taste for gaiety in
reviews, Mr. Wetmore, who conducted that organ
through what is known in New York journalistic
tradition as its "meteoric period." Mr. Wetmore*s
wit perceived in Kilmer his happiest rocket. Not
only given his head but egged on by his editor to
strive for sublime heights of fantasy, this fairly un-
known contributor shot in a series of reviews which
for readability was, the applause now indicated, an
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altogether new thing in the book pages of an Amer-
ican newspaper. "This is a bad book, a very bad
book, indeed," so ran the style. "It is bad because
it makes this reviewer feel old and fat and bald/*
If, together with their humorous assumption of a
jovial cocksureness of manner, the literary judg-
ments expressed were, of necessity, snap-shot judg-
ments, there was nothing snap-shot nor assumed
about a certain quality in them which in general
effect was the most striking of all, namely, the re-
flection in a very positive way of a radiantly clean
and wholesome young nature, abounding in mental
and spiritual health.
As one of the general prime movers in, and for a
number of years Corresponding Secretary of The
Poetry Society of America, Kilmer engaged on the
side in activities which for many another would have
been in themselves almost a whole job. A fervent
Dickensonian, he was for a long period president
and (one felt) the animating principle of the Amer-
ican Dickens Fellowship. He accumulated offices
to such an extent that I am doubtful if anyone but
himself knew exactly how many employments he
had altogether, or at any one moment. He con-
ducted the Poetry department of The Literary Di-
gest for something like nine years, an obligation
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which he continued to fulfill even from Camp Mills,
Long Island, to the time when he sailed for France.
For a time he conducted a similar department in
Current Literature , and also did a quarterly article
on poetry for, I think, the Review of JReviews.
Among his earlier essays in the lecture field was a
paper on "'The Drama as an Instnmient of Sex
Education,*' read before a regular meeting of the
Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis held
at the New York Academy of Medicine, in De-
cember, 1913. The society with the playful name,
I recollect, got seriously interested in the matter of
sex education as then expounded. Their views on
the drama in this connection were enlarged by
acquisition of the idea that though " *The Great
Love' is, in my opinion, one of the most skilfully
constructed plays presented on the New York stage
for many a year, I am quite serious in saying that as
a factor in sex education, it is a thousand times in-
ferior to *Bertha the Beautiful Cloak Model.' "
As Kilmer was always decidedly what is termed
a ready writer, what I should attempt to describe
as a natural writer (a startling exception to the rule
that easy writing makes hard reading) , so he ap-
peared to have the gift of speaking readily in public.
On frequent occasions^ at any rate in his early talks,
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MEMOIR
he neglected altogether to prepare any outline he-
forehand, and even sometimes to choose a subject.
Every now and then, I have known him repeatedly
to say to his companion at dinner, without, however,
any trace at aU of nervousness: "Now, look here:
Put your mind on this. Stop all that gossip. Tell
me what I'm to talk about. I have to begin" (look-
ing at his watch) "in twenty-five minutes.''
He was particularly active in the affairs of the
Authors' Club, and was a member of the Vaga-
bonds, the Colimibia University Club and the
Alianza Puertorriguena. In 1913 he ceased, offi-
cially, to be a churchman. For a brief period he
contemplated the prospect of a professorship, lec-
turing on EngUsh Literature at the University of
the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. Then, to his great
delight, he became a newspaper man — as he continu-
ally put it, with much relish in the part, "a hard
newspaper man." He became a special writer for
the New York Times Swnday Magasdne. I am sure
he saw himself in fancy as one of those weather-
beaten characters bred in the old-time newspaper
school of booze, profanity and hard knocks, his only
text-book the poKce-court blotter and the moulder
of his youth a particularly brutal night city-editor.
He maintained, with humorous arrogance against
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opposing argument, the thesis that ereiy great
writer had got his '"training" as a newspaper man.
He delighted to point, as illustrations of this, to
Dickens, to Thackeray, and to a lot more, who, in
any strict sense of the word, were not **newspaper
men" at all. Hard pressed, he even stood ready to
make some such hilariously sweeping assertion as
that George Eliot, Shakespeare, Tennyson and
Robert Browning were, properly perceived, "news-
paper men."
At any rate, this hard newspaper man had to
begin with a comical equipment for his task: he
would never learn \p typewrite and he knew nothing
of shorthand. Or rather, he was remarkably well
equipped, as one of the outstanding traits of his
character was the fearless zest with which, so to say,
he took the hurdles of life, and a peculiar faculty in
triimiphing over such obstacles as his own limita*
tions. He rapidly invented a curious system of
abbreviations and marks to remind him of points,
which served him as an interviewer as effectively as
any knowledge of stenography could have done.
He energetically entered upon his occupation as a
feature writer with the customary themes of the
"Sunday story." He interviewed, figuratively
speaking, the man who had discovered the missing
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MEMOIR
link, and he got from the latest inventor of perpet-
ual motion all the arresting details of his machine.
And a lively part of the early Sunday morning
ritual at his home was the advance calculating with
a tape measiu*e of the week's income from space
writing.
It was later that he created his own highly suc-
cessful type of literary interview. An intelligent
perception of the business, a perception which is not
general, perhaps is required fully to appreciate the
fact that in this department of newspaper work he
Was an exceedingly skillful journalist. The secret
of his really brilliant success in this field lay in large
part in his instinct for luring the distinguished sub-
ject of bis interview into provocative statements,
enabling him to employ such heads as : "Is O. Henry
a Pernicious Literary Influence?" "Godlessness
Mars Most Contemporary Poetry," "Americans
Lack Loyalty To Their Writers," "Shackled
Magazine Editors Harm Literature," "Declares
Our Rich Authors Make Cheap Literature" and
"Says American Literature Is Going To the
Dogs."
At the time of the death of James Whitcomb
Riley, Kilmer hurried to the Catskills for his inter-
view with Bliss Carman. On his way back to the
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MEMOIR
city, by way of his home at Mahwah, he dashed with
his usual impetuosity in front of the moving train
he was seeking to board, was knocked down and
hurled or dragged a considerable distance, and
taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital at Suffem,
New York, with three ribs fractured and other in-
juries; where, wiring immediately to New York for
his secretary, he dictated an interview as engaging
and as full of joumahstic craft as any he ever
wrote. He seemed much more intent on his Sun-
day story, it is reported by H. Christopher Watts,
who was acting as his secretary at that time, than
on his predicament.
I did not see Kilmer at this time myself, but I
have an idea that, when he had reheved his mind of
the anxiety concerning his article, he entered into
the spirit of his experience with much relish. It
isn't every day that one gets hit by a train, nor
everybody that hajs three ribs broken. Exhilarat-
ing kind of thing, when you see it that way ! I re-
member one time when I was practically in hospital
myself he went to a good deal of trouble to come
to see me. He seemed to admire my predicament
very much, and, beaming upon me, remarked in
high good hiunour that it must be an entertaining
thing to be so completely at the mercy of circum-
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stances over which you had no control. When shall
we look upon his like again 1
III
I really doubt very much whether anybody ever
enjoyed food more than Kilmer. The slender
youth had become a decidedly stocky young man,
who ate mammoth meals with prodigious satisfac-
tion. He dehghted upon sitting down to breakfast
to maintain, with almost savage earnestness (such
was the amusing effect), that the most fitting dish
for that meal was steak. As a matter of fact, how-
ever, his habit was to miss his breakfast altogether
through haste to catch his train, except for a cup of
coffee and a piece of buttered toast which, when he
missed the 'bus, he ate, a mouthful every dozen or
so leaps, on his way down the hill (almost a moun-
tain) to the station. Sundays, however, with the
whole day at home, he apparently regarded among
other things as a sort of barbecue. Looking over
the morning table it was his custom to inquire with
the air of a man making a fairly satisfactory begin-
ning, what was scheduled for dinner.
Kilmer never ate any limch, as the ordinary world
understands the word — about the first hour of the
afternoon he went (when his means had become
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such that he could afford it) to a sort of Thanksgir-
ing or Christmas dinner every day. How proceed-
ing directly to his office he did any work afterward,
was always considerable of a mystery to me« And
lunching alone he doubtless regarded as a misan-
thropic perversion. His luncheons and his frequent
dinners in town alone represented what many would
regard as a rather arduous social life, which however
arduous, however, never failed to include the weekly
luncheon with his mother, Mrs. Kilbum-Kilmer.
As an epilogue, so to say, to his meal it was his wont
to have, speaking his order slowly so as to suck the
full flavour of the idea, "a large black cigar."
One time being in the city with his family for a
period after the birth of one of his children, he gave
a series of Sunday morning breakfasts at a fashion-
able restaurant (it was a pleasant crotchet with him
that he was "a fashionable young man") , entertain-
ments which were distinguished by, first, the fact
the guests so abundantly represented the world of
journalism that they filled a good portion of the
room, and, secondly, by the circumstance of their
lingering at the board until mid-day diners began
to arrive.
How a poet could not be a glorious eater, it was
one of Kilmer's whims to say, he could not see ; for
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MEMOIR
the poet was happier than other men by reason of
his acuter senses, and as his eyes delighted in the
beauty of the world, so should his palate thrill with
pleasure in the taste of the earth's bounteous yield
for the sustenance of men. The romance, too, of
the things we eat he felt lustily.
Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies.
He had another, and a decidedly quaint, notion of
food. He firmly believed that hearty eating was an
adequate physical compensation for loss of sleep.
He was fond of declaring his faith in this fantastic
idea by means of a story of some "ancient receptive
child" (friend of his) who managed to bring up a
family of seven (or so) children by ill-paid hack-
work occupying most of the day and night-^a noble
success due entirely to noble meals.
This man has home and child and wife
And battle set for every day.
This man has God and love and life ;
These stand, all else shall pass away.
And "this man's" days were long, long days:
Kilmer's home, a place of boundless week-end hos-
pitality and almost equally boundless domesticity
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MEMOIR
(guests being obliged to exercise much agility in
clambering about toys with which the stairs were
laden), was also year after year a place of almost
unbelievable literary industry. The trying idiosyn-
crasies of the artistic temperament were about as
discernible in Kilmer as kleptomania. He was, as
you may say, social and domestic in his habits of
writitfg to an amazing degree. Night after night
he would radiantly walk up and down the floor sing-
ing a lullaby to one of his children whom he carried
screaming in his arms while he dictated between
vociferous sounds to his secretary or wife — ^his wife
frequently driven by the drowsiness of two in the
morning to take short naps with her head upon the
typewriter while the Hterally tireless joumahst
fiUed and lighted his pipe.
This, however, was an atmosphere of cloistral se-
clusion compared with Kilmer's office at the New
York Times. Here, where he regularly got
through each week enough hard work to hold down
three or fom* fairly capable young men> he main-
tained a sort of salon for a ludicrous variety of pic-
turesque characters with nothing in particular to
do and no place else to go, ranging from types of
patrician leisure to stray dogs of the Kterary world
visibly out of a job,
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MEMOIR
The latter class, indeed, apparently regarded him
as a kind of a clearing house for employment* A
singularly convincing commentary on the radiating
humanity of this brilliant young man was one rather
grotesque f eatiu*e of his mail. In addition to a con-
stant and copious stream of requests from persons
but slightly known, or quite unknown to him, for
advice as to how to succeed in letters, and for his
personal imprimatur on their^ enclosed manuscripts,
he was apparently constantly in receipt of innumer-
able epistolary stories of extraordinary distress, suf-
fered (generally) by elderly characters defeated in
the hsts of literatm-e. Though there was in Kil-
mer's robust nature a decided distaste, somewhat
analogous to the innate aversion of the clean in
spu-it to moral obhquity, for what he termed "inef-
fLual people," thlls too «. «nmfag sixain of
paternal feeling toward most of those of all ages
with whom he was in contact. And this feeling he
did not neglect, whenever the occasion arose, to
translate into practical effect.
He had a comical manner of terming his elders
*Young" So-and-So. I was six years his senior,
which at the period of life at which w;e met repre-
sented a considerable difference in experience.
And yet, throughout oiu: association, in spiritual
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■>
MEMOIR
I
/
force he was the oak, I the clinging vine. And I
know of cases where this was quite as much so when
the other man was something like fifteen years the
elder. One such instance, ludicrous in its con-
trast between the two men, was confessed to me with
deep feeling just the other day.
"So-long' or "good-bye'* was seldom Kilmer's
parting word. It was rather a word he continually
used which will be thought of as peculiarly his as
long as his memory endures, the closing word of
"Rouge Bouquet." The last time I saw him at his
home, then at Larchmont Manor, New York, my
companion (in marriage) and I upon leaving al-
most missed our car, which started a block or so
from the Kilmer house. As the three of us dashed
after it, Kilmer stopped this car by what seemed to
me something like sheer force of his willing it to
stop. Then, as he dropped away from the race,
there came from him high and clear out of the
night (and always shall I hear it ring) his benedic-
tion: "Farewell 1 Children/' Yes, it is even so;
as the spirit is measured and the frailties of the soul
are nimibered, how many who knew this wondrous
boy were his "children" 1
The wisdom of the maxim "A busy man is never
too busy to do one thing more" was indisputable in
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MEMOIR
the spectacle of Kilmer* Though this was not, so
far as I recollect, a maxim he employed, he had one
of his own something hke it, which admirably
summed up his practical philosophy. When con-
fronted by some financial dilemma, he was fond of
declaring: "The demand creates iiie supply. A
soimd economic principle/' He seemed to crave
serious responsibilities and insistent obligations as
some men crave liquor; and he grew more rosy as
these increased.
Thank Grod for the mighty tide of fears
Against me always hurled 1
Thank God for the bitter and ceaseless strife,
And the sting of His chastening rodl
There was nothing incongruous to Kilmer about the
incongruity expressed in a communication written
in 1916 to the Reverend Edward F. Garesche,
S. J.; a letter which began by saying, "I am sorry
that yom* letter of October 11 has been so long un-
answered, but this has been the busiest month of my
life" ; which then told of his looping the loop of the
country in lecture engagements; proceeded to dis-
cuss a matter which had made a strong appeal to his
heart, the foimding of an Academy of Catholic
Letters to be called the Marian Institute ; and con-
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MEMOIR
eluded with the remark, ^'I will gladly take on the
work of acting secretary until the members make
their own selection/'
IV
In 1913, Kilmer's daughter Rose, nine mcmths of
age, was stricken with infantile paralysis. It was
then, upon his bringing his family to town to give
his daughter the treatment of a specialist, when he
came to my house to tell me of this, that I first dis-
tinctly realised that this yoimg man was remarkable
-in . nu«ner tar beyond mere talent. The ide.
which he kept firmly before his mind was that it
had been declared there was no occasion to fear her
death as a result of her affliction. Diu*ing the course
of his stay with me tiiat day he said several times,
**Well, there are lots of people worse off than I
am." This idea, too, it was apparent, he felt he
must hold before him. And then, with his amazing
and imconquerable flair for life, he launched upon
the theme that this was a "very interesting disease,"
and he elaborated the thought that an infirmity of
the body frequently resulted in an increased vitality
of the mind.
"I like to feel that I have always been a Catii-
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MEMOIR
oEc/* was a sentiment frequently expressed by
mer. It has repeatedly been declared by friends
very close to him that his minute knowledge of pious
customs and practices of which a life-long Catholic
might easily be ignorant was a constant surprise to
them, but that with respect to religion as particular-
ised in himself he kept' silent, would never discuss
the steps that led to his conversion, and it was only
by chance they discovered he was a daily communi-
cant. It was late in 1918 that Ealmer astonished
the little world that then comprised his family, his
friends and acquaintances by entering, with his
wife, the Roman Catholic Church. One afternoon
not long after this occurrence he not so much in-
vited as directed me over the telephone to meet him
that night for dinner at the Colimibia Club. His
purpose soon became clear. This was the only
solemn hour I ever spent with Kilmer. I think it
well to record here what he deeply impressed upon
me: that it was this searing test of his spirit which
had come upon him in the affliction of his daughter
that fixed his rehgion.
Kilmer did not become a great patriot when his
country entered the world war. He was, of course,
the same in fibre then as before. Only then was
known to him and visible to others what was latent
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MEMOIR
in his heart. And in this sense it was, I think, that
it was clear to him that he did not become, but had
always been a Catholic, though he had not earlier
realised it. He tried all things and held fast to that
which he found good. He was inwardly driven to
seek until his spirit found its home. That only the
time of his conversion was, in a sense, accidental,
and that the conversion itself was inevitable, must
be evident in the fact that he was never really him-
self before he became, as we say, a convert. Then
his fluid spirituality, his yearning sense of religion,
was stabilized. What is the "secret," as we say, of
all that has been told of his ability? His courage,
his mental and physical energy, were, manifestly,
unusual. But his character, in the faith that he
embraced, found its tempered spring. His talent
was a winged seed which in the rich soil which had
mothered so much art f oimd fructification.
It is not an imsupported assertion to say that he
was in his time and place the laiu*eate of the Catholic
Church. His sentiments as to the function of a
Catholic poet he has expressed very positively in
his essays and lectures. He joyed in the new proof
given by Helen Parry Eden "that piety and mirth
may comfortably dwell together." "A convert to
Catholicism," he wrote of Mr. Yeats on Lionel
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MEMOIR
Johnson, "is not a person who wanders ahout weep-
ing over autumn winds and dead leaves, mumbling
Latin and sniffing incense." Nor is it necessary to
lay aesthetic hands on the church's treasures, "and
decorate rhymes with rich ecclesiastical imagery and
the fragrant names of the saints.'' But in Faith
one may find ''that piu*ity and strength which are
the guarantees of immortahty."
And, once a Catholic, there never was any possi-
bility of mistaking Kilmer's point of view: in all
matters of religion, art, economics and politics, as
well as in all matters of faith and morals, his point
of view was obviously and imhesitatingly Catholic.
Considerable as were his gifts and skill as a poli-
tician in the business of his career, the veriest zealot
could not say that he did not do the most impolitic
things in the service of his faith. A very positive
figure, he laboured tirelessly, alternating from one
field to another, for the Catholic Church.
As a brilliant interpretative critic of Catholic
writers, such as Crashaw, Patmore, Francis
Thompson, Lionel Johnson and Belloc, he brought,
I think I may venture to say, an altogether new
touch into Catholic journalism in America, a strik-
iQg and distinguished blend of "piety and mirth,"
which had the rare and highly effective quality of
MEMOIR
being both engaging and highly illuminating even
to, as Kilmer would amiably have said, the Pagan.
Impetus, of course, was given to his style in this by
his admiration for the brilliant school of English
Cathohc joumaUsts, an impetus doubtless accel-
erated by the personal acquaintance with Belloc, the
Chestertons and the Meynells he gained in a flying
visit to England in 1914 to rescue his mother from
war difficulties in London ; when, during a few odd
moments before his return, he established a lively
connection with the NorthcliflFe papers and T. P.'s
Weekly. Even so, Kilmer almost, or quite, alone
transplanted this particular spark; and his note of
witty common sense and spiritual sensibility was
particularly Kilmerian, too.
One day about four years ago the viUage Post
Office at Mahwah did a totally unprecedented and
most extraordinary business in outgoing mail, and
Kilmer was again multiplied manifold. The neat
circulars which he had printed and with which he
stuffed the mail box announced that the author of
"Trees," a member of the staff of the New York
Times^ etc., etc., "offered the following lectures for
the coming season." The result may best be epi-
tomised in the parable of the gentleman who cast
his bread upon the waters to have it come back to
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MEMOIR
him in the form of sardine sandwiches. The rapid
development of Kilmer's lecture business, which
soon assimied the proportions of no mean career in
itself, immensely extended his force as a quicken-
ing influence in the Catholic world. Before so-
cieties and educational institutions in many places,
frequently travelling as far as Notre Dame, In-
diana, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, he flung his
bright portraits of "seekers after that real but elu-
sive thing called beauty, a thing which they found
in their submission to her who is jthe mother of aU
learning, all cultiu*e, and all the arts, the Catholic
Church."
As a hterary lectiu-er and a reader of his own
poems before secular audiences his success was no
less abundant. In "the only combination of its kind
since Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley," as the
circular of the J. B. Pond Lycemn Bureau stated
it, "the young American Poet" and the author of
"Pigs is Pigs" contributed considerably to the light-
ening of the rigours of existence by an extended
repetition of "a joint evening of readings from their
works." Ellis Parker Butler, in a letter before me,
writes of his partner on the programme:
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MEMOIR
He was a most charming travelling companion
and an ideal team-mate for the purpose we had in
mind. I would not have thought of going "on tour"
if I had not met Kilmer. My idea was never to
"go on torn*" but, after I had met Kilmer, to "go on
tour with Kilmer." He was altogether lovable and
loved.
It would be a decidedly false estimate of Kilmer
which failed to note, even with some emphasis, that
he was an excellent man of business. He "played
the game," in the exceedingly difficult job of earn-
ing a thoroughly competent living at the literary
profession, with a dexterity which, it was frequently
apparent, was at once an inspiration and a despair
to those who sought to rival him. The Kilmer cult
which grew apace was considerably accelerated by a
rich Kilmerian strategy. And he delivered to the
little world of intensely intense literary societies and
blue-nosed salons which hung upon his lips the pure
milk of the word with a strongly humorous con-
sciousness of the feat as a part of the immense sport
of living.
Kilmer's "act" as it was observed from behind the
scenes is excellently presented by an associate in the
office of the New York Times. This writer says in
the Philadelphia Press:
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Our editor analysed him into three distinct
manners: Kihner, the Uterary man; Kihner, the
lecturer; and Kilmer, himself. His first appear-
ance in the office would give you the cue to him for
the day. If he came in grinning with his pipe draw-
ing well, we would know that nothing was to be
feared ; he was himself. When he got his "literary"
manner on, the symptom was a tapping of his eye-
glass, with his right hand on the fingers of his left.
When he appeared in his cutaway coat and a partic-
ularly pastoral necktie, we knew that on that day
the elderly ladies of This Literary Club or the
young ladies of That Academy were to be treated to
a discom'se on certain aspects of Victorian verse.
One day he came in, obviously decked out for a
lecture. Without his having said a word about it,
the assistant Sunday editor spoke up: "Let's cut
out work this afternoon and hear Kilmer lecture."
A look of horror overspread his face. "iF'or
heaven's sake, don't," he said. "I couldn't go
through with it." I don't beKeve any of us ever did
hear him.
A thing which I found very singular was that, in
manner Kilmer was apt, in the two or three later
years of his life, to give strangers on their first meet-
ing the impression of being somewhat too dignified
for so young a man, of being, as his office associate
John Bunker in an admirable, even a remarkable,
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portrait of him at this period published in America,
says, "in fact just a trifle pompous." Mr. Bunker
continues : "This was due partly to his physical ap-
pearance, and alsQ, insofar as it had any basis in
reality, to that protective instinct which quickly
teaches a sensitive and imaginative spirit to cast a
veil between itself and the outer world."
I myself think this effect had its origin in the
same perverse instinct which causes you, immedi-
ately after talking with a deaf person, to speak very
loud to your next auditor whom you very well know
can hear perfectly ; that is, it was the result of being
keyed up to appearing on an elevated platform be-
fore a curious throng. He one time astonished me
by the declaration that it was only by, quite early in
his life, drastically schooling himself to the task,
one then exceedingly trying and hateful to him, that
he became able to rise and "speak" at all. The most
entertaining recollection, by the way, that I have of
the Kilmerian pontifical manner is of a time when
he generously invited me to have my shoes polished
with him, thrust his hand deep into his pocket to pay
the boy, paused, and with a verjf large gestiu*e
directed him to call in again later in the day.
There is first-rate perspicacity in the remark of
one of Kilmer's friends, Laurence J. Gromme, that
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at one score and ten he was, in the amount that he
had lived, about seventy years old. Something of
the force and sharpness of Mr. Bunker's evocation
of the man as he was at last resides, I think, in the
circumstance that here is no blending in the mind of
the flower and the bud. He says: **When I first
met Kilmer he had just passed his thirtieth year, but
he gave me the impression of being somewhat older.
I afterwards spoke of this to him, and it was his
theory that newspaper work had served to age him.
The truth was that it was due not merely to his
newspaper work, but generally to the incessant and
intense mental activity, the extraordinary and flam-
ing energy, whereby he crowded into ten years the
experiences of several ordinary lifetimes." And
this touch of the slight Bunker portrait is, I feel,
essential to any fuller picture :
As to his physical aspect, he was stockily built
and about medivmi height, and his habit of body was
what I should call plvmip, though later, imder the
stress of military drill, he changed somewhat in this
last respect. I noted at once that he had a remark-
able head — ^well rounded, with broad and high f or-
head and a very pronounced bulge at the back, cov-
ered thickly with dark, reddish-brown hair. But his
eyes were his most remarkable feature. They were
of the imusual colour of red, and they had a most
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peculiar quality which Ijcan only inadequately sug-
gest by saying that they literally glowed. It actu-
ally seemed as if there were a fire behind them, not a
leaping and blazing fire, but a steady and unquench-
able flame which appeared to suffuse the whole eye-
ball with a brooding light. This characteristic was
so striking that I cannot help dilating on it. And
I observed later on that this glow, this brooding and
somewhat sombre light, never left his eyes even in
his most weary or most care-free moments, so that
they gave the impression of what I believe was the
fact — ^the impression of a brain behind them which
was working intensely and perhaps even feverishly
every hour of the waking day.
The better poet Kilmer became, as his friend
Richardson Wright says in his admirable "Appre-
ciation" in The BeUman, the less like a poet he
acted. And after he grew up, he would about as
soon have sestheticised, off the platform, as he would
have forged a check. Whenever he did refer to
poetry as related to himself he, as the slang term
has it, took it smiling. One of Kilmer's most pro-
noimced pet aversions was the phrase, utterly
mawkish to him, about "prostituting" one's talent.
He one time explained to me, with considerable ap-
parent pride, that he used every idea three times : in
a poem, in an article, and in a lecture.
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Charles WilKs Thompson, an editorial writer of
the New York Times, and to whom belongs the
credit of first taking, as editor of the Sunday Maga'
Tine and Booh Rexnew, Kilmer's "stuflF" in any
amomit, inspired, so to say, the poem '^DeHcates-
sen," in this way. Mr. Thompson happened to re-
mark to Kilmer that of course there were a lot of
things which couldn't be treated in poetry. Kil-
mer declared he would like to know what they were.
Mr. Thompson cast about in his mind for the most
ridiculous theme for a poem he could think of, and
finally proclaimed that no one could possibly write
a poem about such a thing as a delicatessen shop.
"I'll write a poem about a delicatessen shop," Kil-
mer promptly replied. "It will be a long poem.
I'll sell it to a high-brow magazine. It will be much
admired. And it will be a good poem." He in-
sisted on betting on this the simi of several dollars.
The origin of "The Twelve-Forty-Five" I do not
exactly know. But I remember shortly before that
poem was written, sitting disgusted and miserable
with Kilmer in that horrible "Jersey City shed"
waiting for the midnight train. Taking out of his
mouth that villainously large, fifty-cent pipe (men-
tioned in all genuine appreciations) Kilmer, with
a fervour almost violent, suddenly exclaimed: "I
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certainly do like railroad stations! They are fine
places 1" The very famous poem "The White
Ships and The Red" (a poem so wonderfully eflFec-
tive that it was at once reprinted all over the coun-
try and in Europe) was a newspaper assignment.
He rather liked the poem when he saw it in the
paper ; though, with his feet cocked up on his desk,
he spoke apologetically of what he felt to be the fail-
ure of the latter stanzas to link up perfectly with the
first, explaining that a luncheon appointment, at
which he chatted for an hour or two, had split the
writing of it into two sittings. That the author of
this "Lusitania" poem thoroughly felt and meant
what he said, is, I fancy, sufficiently proven by the
event to permit of this being told.
The point is, that Kilmer was a poet, an artist of
a high order, a perfectly conscious master of what
he was doing. The febrile gush of emotion he
loathed. He knew finely that :
It is stem work, it is perilous work, to thrust your
hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm
the hearts of men.
There was nothing accidental about the effect of his
own verse, any more than there was "luck" in his
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worldly success. He achieved the one as he did the
other by a masculine heart and mind. And while
all things were necessary and joyous, it was impos-
sible not to feel that, after all, throughout his day
"the rhymei^'s honest trade" was his primary con-
cern.
He was sufficiently grounded in literature to feel,
as Mr. Le Gallienne says, no "weariness with those
literary methods which had sufficed for Chaucer and
Shakespeare and Milton, or Catullus or Bion, or
Fran9ois Villon — content, with reverent ambition,
to. tread that immortal path."
In his religious mysticism a trace, and more than
a trace, has been found of Crashaw, of Vaughan, of
Herbert, and of Belloc and Chesterton. And there
is no difficulty at all about finding in Kilmer hints
of Patmore, and there may be easily recognised
something of the accents of A. E. Housman and of
Edwin Arlington Robinson. He did, indeed; to
put it in a racy phrase, have the drop on those who
do not know that all art that endures must have its
roots in a constant interrogation of the "unimpeach-
able testimony" of the ages. His song was as old
as the hills, and as fresh as the morning. Precisely
in this, in fact, is his remarkableness, his originality,
as a contemporary poet; and in this will be, I think;
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his abiding quality. "Simple and direct, yet not
without subtle magic/' wrote Father James J*
Daly, Sjr., in a review of "Trees and Other
Poems," printed in America, his verse "seems art-
lessly naive, yet it possesses deep undercurrents of
masculine and forceful thought; it is ethical in its
seriousness, and yet as playful and light-hearted as
sunlight and shadows under summer oaks." And
this admirable summing up of Kilmer's talent
leaves little more in the way of direct criticism to be
said.
Mr. Le Gallienne with felicitous tact of phrase
has touched upon this, that "no young poet of our
time has so reverently, on so many pages, in so
many different ways, so playfully at times, as in
that masterpiece of playful reverence, *A Blue
Valentine,' woven through the texture of his song
the love of his lady — ^that lady 'Aline,' whose name
will be gently twined about his as long as the
printed word endures." A misquotation in the
Ladies^ Home Journal led to an interesting tribute
to the author of "Trees." Many readers of the
Journal were somewhat startled to find the editor
attributing to John Masefield the lines :
A tree that looks at Grod all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.
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The following issue of the magazine contained tiiis
correction and acknowledgment by Mr. Bok:
I am free to confess that I did not know the cor-
rect author. I had been reading John Masefield
that morning and unconsciously wrote his name as
the author of these lines. A nimiber of friends have
pointed to the error and suppUed the knowledge.
The author is Joyce Kihner, and to him I owe, and
here express, my sense of deep apology. The ex-
quisite lines were worthy of John Masefield, but
that does not make them less worthy of their right-
ful author, as all will agree who read his beautiful
work in his book "Trees and Other Poems.**
As one, somewhat effusive commentator has re-
marked, "Trees" just could not be confined within
the covers of a book. At once reprinted in news-
papers throughout the United States (and stiU be-
ing so reprinted) it was crowned in that warmest
of all ways in which a work of ]iteratiu*e can be
honoured, by being cut out by the world and pasted
in its hat. In one version it reads, in part, in this
way:
Cuando contemplo im arbol pienso: nunca vere
un poema tan bello y tan intenso.
Un arbol silendoso que con ansia se af erra a la
dulce y jugosa entrans de la tierra.
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Un arbol que mirando los cielos se extansia y en
oracion levanta los brazos noche y dia.
Many of Kilmer's poems have been translated into
Spanish by Salomon de la Selva, Enriquez Urenia
and others, and have appeared in a number of prom-
inent South American papers.
In a letter from France to Edward W. Cook,
who in quest of material for a book on contempo-
rary poets had written Kilmer asking several ques-
tions, Kihner commented, among other things, on
his ''earUer efforts in poetry'' (as the questionnaire
apparently had put it), in a manner which is evi-
dence again of how perfectly well he knew what he
was about. "If what I nowadays write is consid-
ered poetry," he announced, "then I became a poet
in November, 1918." Admirable for hard-headed-
ness, directness and precision, it is a statement
which leaves the critic no point upon which to take
issue. His early poems "were only the exercises of
an amateur, imitations, useful only as technical
training." The pecuKar thing about these highly
skilful experiments in various forms of craftsman-
ship is that they were so very much better as poems
than the derivative efforts usually written at Uiis
period of apprenticeship, "so free/' as Mr. Le Gal-
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notes, ''from those artistic immaturities which
have made many old great poets angrily denounce
unlicensed reprinters of their 'first editions/ " And
in this fact they have a decided, and a perfectly le-
gitimate, interest for the observer of the develop-
ment of his talent — ^though Kilmer declared "they
were worthless, that is, all of them which preceded
a poem called 'Pennies,' which you will find in my
book 'Trees and Other Poems/ '' He added, "I
want all of my poems written before that to be for-
gotten/*
He was writing, one remembers, to a gentleman
with whom he was so slightly acquainted that he
addressed him as "Dear Mr. Cook," with the meas-
ure of whose sympathy and critical acumen, it is
to be inferred, he was not conversant, and who pre-
siunably was about to estimate (with what perspec-
tive he could not perceive) his earliest productions.
It were better to head off any imcertainty in the
matter. Also, we all know, one's hot impatience
with one's strivings of yesterday is meUowed by
time into an amiable and appreciative tolerance of
one's earnest efforts of twenty years ago. It is diffi-
cult to think that Kilmer at fifty would have had an
unjust scorn of those charming exercises on the
poetic scales he wrote at twenty-one,
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Anyhow, no man can, by decree or otherwise, ob-
literate his past ; boldi the good and the bad that he
has done continue to pursue him. Ten times thrice
happy is he, rarest of men, who, like Kilmer, never
penned a line or said a word or did a deed that can
arise tobring confusion to those that love him. The
world does not willingly let die those verses on which
glistens the dew of his tender youth. They are
brought forth for praise by no mean critics in trib-
ute to his memory. And in conformity with the
wishes of those most jealous of his good name as a
poet a representative selection of his earfy poems
is reprinted in these volumes.
He that lives by the pen shall perish by the pen,
saith the wisdom of James Huneker. For a sapling
poet, within a few short years and by the hard busi-
ness of words, to attain to a secretary and a butler
and a family of, at length, f oiu* children, is a modem
Arabian Nights Tale. Equally impossible is it,
seemingly, to accompUsh another thing, which is a
remarkable part of Kilmer's distinction. From
first to last, from the verses contributed to Moods in
1909 to the last poem he wrote, "The Peacemaker,"
printed in the Saturday Evemng Post in October,
1918, Kilmer was a poet's poet. "A pretty good
poet," said such a poet (shaking his head at his con-
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viction of the truth of this) as Bliss CarmaiL His
poems were repeatedly adjudged high places
among tiie best poems read before the Poetry So-
ciety. Among competitive honours, under the name
of "John Langdon" he won easily enough with his
poem, "The Annunciation," first prize in the
Marian Poetry contest conducted by The Queen's
Work, in July, 1917, an award competed for by a
great number of poets, , including many in other
coimtries. He was a poet's poet who declared (with
considerable vehemence, I remember) that he cer-
tainly wished he had written "Casey At The Bat."
He one time said in praise of a book of essays that it
was "that kind of glorified reporting which is
poetry." As a singer of the simpler annals of hu-
manity his place will draw closer and closer, I think,
to that of the most widely loved poet of our own era.
Only the name of James Whitcomb Riley expresses
in greater measiu*e the rich gift of speaking with
authentic song to the simplest hearts. A man who
believes that churches are devices of the devil and
literature a syrup for crack-brained females can en-
joy, with profit to his soul, "The House With No-
body In it," "Dave LiUy" and "The Servant Girl
and the Grocer's Boy" equally with "The Old
Swimmin'-Hole" and "Little Orphant Annie."
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If Colonel Roosevelt had never done anything
other than what he has done in writing, he would
undoubtedly be highly esteemed as an American
man of letters. And people have made very cred-
itable reputations as himiourists who never wrote
anything Uke as humorous essays as those of Joyce
Kilmer. They fairly reek with the joy of life.
They explode with intellectual robustness. They
are fragrant in fancy, richly erudite in substance,
touch-and-go in manner, poetic in feeling, rocking
with mirth, and display an extraordinary flair for
style. If it should seem that I am not here meas-
uring my words I suggest a reference to a piece of
documentary evidence called "The Gentle Art of
Christmas Giving," a "Simday story" in the New
York Times, here reprinted. Writing at top-notch
speed, never looking again at what he had written,
intentionally producing a readily marketable com-
modity, from which profit must be realised quickly,
EHmer was an exceedingly rare bird in America;
that is, a beUetristic journalist. There is always the
touch to his work of a man of letters. Decidedly
BeUocian, Chestertonian, certainly his humorous
essays are. But that it was a^good deal more an
affinity of mind with, than an imitation of, those
splendidly humorous English philosophers is borne
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out by this : Joyce Kilmer did not talk poetry, but
he did talk exactly like his essays, which admirably
present the brave humorous wisdom of the man as
his intimate friends knew him.
Official critical authority did not dampen his
verve. As a contributing editor of "Warner's
Library bf the World's Best Literature," he sup-
plied the articles on Madison Cawein, John Mase-
field, William Vaughn Moody and Francis Thomp-
son. He contributed prefaces to various volumes
of standar(| authors. Excellent examples of this
department of his activity are his Introduction to
Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" in
the Modem Library, his introduction to the Amer-
ican edition of the "Verses" of Hilaire Belloc, and
the introduction to the volume "Dreams and Im-
ages," his anthology of Catholic poets. The Intro-
duction to this Anthology is dated 165th Regiment,
Camp Mills, Mineola, N. Y., August, 1917, just a
year before Sergeant Kilmer's death in battle.
Doubtless few know that at one time Kilmer had
drawn a contract to write a "Life" of Father Tabb.
Because of peculiar complications in the situation
this enterprise, most unfortunately, fell through.
In 1916 Kilmer was called to the faculty of the
School of Journalism of New York University, in
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succession to Arthur Guiterman, to lecture on
''Magazine and Newspaper Verse." The object of
the course, which was open to outsiders as well as
to those enrolled in the School of Journalism, was
to familiarise the students with the practical side of
writing verse for publication.
VI
It seems rather a misnomer, and something of
an absurdity, to say that Kilmer was ever neutral
in anything. But in the pohtical sense he was a
neutral, and, if it may be put that way, neutral to
a pronounced degree, preceding the entrance of the
United States into the war. His keen feeling for
the sturdy virtues and robust customs of Old Eng-
land, Merrie England, was of course, patent. His
delight in London, and the English countryside,
which he knew from a child, was manifest. The
pillars of his fairly large literature were, of course,
English. His profound sense of integrity was vio-
lently jolted by the violation of Belgium. As the
war went on, however, he developed an attitude
which was quite capable of being interpreted as
Pro-German, by anyone interested in so interpret-
ing it. The explanation of this attitude is simple
enough. Instinctively a combative character intel-
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lectually, his humorous essays, which expressed him
so intimately, ahnost without exception f oimd their
spring in his running coimter to some current idea.
As he one time remarked, he was "bored by femin-
ism, futurism, free love ;" and, too, he was invari-
ably for the under dog. It may seem rather gro-
tesque to present Germany by implication as an
under dog in the early years of the war ; the point is,
the force of the argument was so overwhelmingly
against Germany that Kilmer reacted to this in a
characteristic fashion, stood boldly against the cur-
rent, and was, in fact, a neutral — ^until the sinking
of the Lusitania. All reports agree, including even
reports from sources of strong anti-English feeling
where Kilmer's inclination to see what could be said
for Germany was coveted, that from this point on
his manner was altogether hostile to Germany.
Outside of his Lusitania poem he did not, so far as
I know, denounce the deed ; but the unanimity and
the precision with which the change in him is fixed
by all who observed him is striking.
Kilmer's successive literary passions were a curi-
ous medley. He seemed to have been bom with a
great love for Scott, and he held stoutly to Sir
Walter throughout the years. In his burly days he
foimd a humorous sport in defending, with jovial
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MEMOIR
emphasis, tiie old-fashioned chivabous romance
against the scientific modern novel. In his aesthetic
period he had a touch, hardly more, of Oscar Wilde,
though early in his literary career he experienced a
rather severe case of Swinbumeitus. Some time
shortly after this he was very much intrigued by the
Celtic revival. Shaemas O'Sheel, a friend dating
back to Columbia days, bears testimony that an
early boast of Kilmer's was that an ancestor of his
l»dLn longed for taking a rebel's part in 'ninety-
eight. And though as we know, Kihner's imme-
diate ancestry was not Irish, a GaeUc enthusiast
who has made a specialty of the Irish language, sug*
gests in his ardour, that the name Kilmer is a deriva-
tion of Mac Gilla Mor. At any rate, an affection
for Ireland — ^her literature, her lore, her traditions,
and her people — ^was indeed natural with him.
In his Yeats period Kilmer had about chosen
"Nine Bean Rows" as the name of his house then in
the course of construction, though it was not alto-
gether "of clay and wattles made." The thing
which deterred him from this decision was that per-
sons unacquainted with the poem "Innisfree," to
whom he spoke of the matter, conceived his address
as Number Nine Beanrose Avenue. What a fimny
street^ th^ said, that is. Literary merely, of
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course, that; and though a part of the whole, re-
mote from later, deeper and graver things. Some-
thing inherently Irish in Kihner undoubtedly was
felt by many, Irish themselves and very much so,
who, in some cases, are "quite certain" that the fact
of their being Irish was the reason why he regarded
them and their work as writers with friendship.
He did, indeed, like all manner of Irish. He liked
the Irish fairies, he liked Lady Gregory, he liked
most decidedly the poor Irish people who went to
the Catholic church, and (as he later showed), of
all soldiers, Irish soldiers he liked best.
Romantic Ireland is not old ;
For years untold her youth will shine,
Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread.
The blood of martyrs is her wine.
Everything chivalrous and sacrificial appealing
to his deepest instincts, he felt noble "delight in
hopes that were vain." It is not at all improbable
that had he been an Irishman horn and resident in
Ireland he would have been among the martyrs of
Easter Week. In certain qualities of his soul a kin-
ship with these spirits may readily be traced.
Some of them, I have been told, he knew personally ;
and his reverence for Plunkett he has written.
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There is no rope can strangle song,
And not for long death takes his toll;
No prison bars can dim the stars,
Nor quicklime eat the living soul.
And all that Kilmer wrote, every line of it, he wrote
in two ways ; he wrote it in words, and he wrote it in
his acts. When the idea of the Poets' Meeting to
express the sympathy of American poets with the
three Irish martyred poets of Easter Week, Pearse,
MacDonough and Plunkett, first occmred to
Eleanor Rogers Cox, she asked Kilmer's advice
about it over the telephone. And he said, "Go
ahead, I'll back you up," with the result that the
meeting, a success, took place in Central Park, with
Edwin Markham presiding, Kilmer, Margaret
Widdemer, Miss Cox, Louis Untermeyer, and
many other representative poets taking part.
When you say of the making of ballads and songs
that it is a woman's work.
You forget all the fighting poets that have been in
every land.
There was Byron, who left all his lady-loves, to
fight against the Turk,
And David, the singing king of the Jews, who was
bom with a sword in his hand.
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It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to
the Wars and died.
And Sir PhiKp Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet as
his arm was strong ;
And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover
meets his bride,
Because he carried in his soul the courage of his
song.
Indeed, in the logical scheme of things (or, at any
rate, in Joyce Kilmer's scheme of things) the poet
is a soldier, an idealist with the courage of his song ;
and, in a manner of speaking, all soldiers are poets,
whether or not they ever pen a line, for they give
supreme expression to the conviction of their soul.
And then, as Christopher Morley has finely written
in his tribute to Kilmer, "the poet must go where
the greatest songs are singing." To anyone who
knew Kilmer it would have been perfectly dum-
founding if, when war was declared between his
country and Germany, he had not done exactly as
he did. It is inconceivable — ^to picture hun moving
about here, from restaurant to office, in this hour.
Flatly, the thing can't be done. With him, when
he joined the army, it was only one fight more, the
best, and as it proved, the last.
He hated many things, but I believe tliat of all
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MEMOIR
things he hated most a pacifist — ^a pacifist in any-
thing. He was a fighter. He fought for his home,
stone by stone ; he fought for his renown. His con-
ception of the church was the Church Militant. His
thoughts dwblt continually on warrior-saints. He
believed in the nobility of war and the warrior's call-
ing, so long as the cause was holy, or believed to be
holy. As he saw it, there was no question as to his
duty. This I know, you might as well have asked
Niagara Falls why it pours over its ledge, as have
discussed with Kilmer the matter of his going to
war. That was, in its way, just such another force
of natiu'e. As to what might happen to him, it is
hardly necessary to remark that his faith told him
that that would be all right, too. John Bunker was
among the last to bid him farewell. There is tlie
Kilmerian splendour in what he wrote :
You didn't pose, self-conscious of your lot.
Or speak of what might be or might have been;
You always thought heroics simply rot.
And so you merely wore your old-time grin.
Kilmer had first joined the Officers' Reserve
Training corps. He soon resigned from this. In
less than three weeks after the United States en-
tered the war he enlisted as a private in the Seventh
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Regiment, National Guard, New York. His own
statement was : "I haven't time for Plattsburg : had
too much work to finish, but I had to get in." The
Regiment was mustered into the Federal Service on
July 15, 1917; and Kilmer expected to go to train-
ing camp somewhere in the South for a couple of
months, then to be sent to "France, or Russia, or
Cuba, or Mexico or somewhere else." He had a
great distaste for going to Russia, because he dis-
liked cold climates. He one time expressed a de-
cided aversion to a book commonly held to be quite
good. When asked what was the matter with it, he
dehoimced it as being about "one of those cold
coimtries." It would not, of course, have t)een EjI-
mer had he not found elation in t^e distinguished
and picturesque character of the crack regiment to
which he belonged. "We are the oldest outfit in the
Guard — Lafayette reviewed us in 1824 and Joflfre
two weeks ago." If you had not seen the dress uni-
form of "the Seventh" you heard all about it at
lunch. And "hard newspaper man" as he was, he
became even "harder" now. "Can't hiui; my feel-
ings," he wrote requesting a friend to be quite frank
with him. "Hard military character, seriously con-
sidering acquisition of habit of chewing tobacco."
Shortly before the Seventh left New York for
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Spartanburg, South Carolina, Kilmer was trans-
ferred, at his own request, to the 165th Infantry,
U. S. A., formerly the famous old "Fighting Sixty-
ninth," New York, a imit of the Rainbow Division,
assembled at Camp Mills, Mineola, Long Island.
He was most particular to impress upon his friends
the point that he had been transferred at his own
volition. I do not know that he ever said so, in so
many words, but I gathered from him the impres-
sion that a considerable part of his motive in having
himself transferred was occasioned by his belief that
the 165th would go sooner than the Seventh to the
battlefield. Then, too, as we know, he was "half
Irish"; and an Irish- American regiment doubtless
was a powerful magnet to him. In the 165th the
people he liked best of all were "the wild Irish boys
who left Ireland a few years ago, some of them to
escape threatened conscription, and travelled about
the country in gangs, generally working on the rail-
roads. They have delightful songs that have never
been, written down, but sung in vagabonds' camps
and country jails. I have got some of the songs
down and hope to get more — 'The Boston Burglar'
— 'Sitting in My Cell All Alone' — ^they are a fine,
a veritable Irish-American folk-lore."
Kilmer at this time was the father of four chil-
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dren, named respectively Kenton Sinclair, Rose,
Deborah Clanton and Michael Barrjr. One day he
appeared in my office on an errand of business re-
lating to the handling of his literary property. He
was, in outward eflFect, perfectly composed, an ad-
mirable picture of a young soldier. It was tlien, in
what followed, that he displayed the most extraor-
dinary, the most amazing, measure of spiritual stat-
ure that I ever observed in any man or ever read
of in any himian book. Settled, with his customary
air, in my chair, he demanded some pipe tobacco.
I had none. And for this he heartily damned me
out. Then he said: ''Bob, my affairs are somewhat
in disarray." Thinking that perhaps he wanted to
borrow two dollars, or something like that, I asked:
"What's the matter, Joyce ?" "Well," he answered,
quite in his ordinary way, "several days ago Rose
died; yesterday my son, Christopher, was bom;
Kenton is with my wife at her mother's ; my family
is, m fact, very much scattered; I'm expecting to
go to France within a few days — ^and I have many
other difficulties." That was all he said as to this.
He then talked excellent business. I went to the
elevator with him. We shook hands more quietly
ilian usual ; he said, "Good-bye, Bob ;" and the door
of the car closed upon him, standing erect in his mil-
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itary overcoat, looking somewhat serious. That
was all.
From Company H. Kilmer was transferred,
within a short time, to Headquarters Company, and
exchanged his eight hours a day of violent physical
exercise (''most deadening to the brain, a useful
anodyne for one, coming as it did after my grief,"
he wrote in an intimate letter) for exacting but "in-
teresting" statistical work. Though called Senior
Regimental Statistician he continued to rank as a
private. His work was under the direction of the
Regimental Chaplain, Father Francis Patrick
Duffy. He was thankful, he wrote from Mineola
in a letter at this time, that he was not with the
Seventh at Spartanburg, as from Mineola he could
telephone to his wife every night, and he said: 'I'll
be an accomplished cuss when I get back from the
wars — I'll know how to typewrite and to serve Mass
and to sing the 'Boston Burglar/ ''
VII
It was "the pleasantest war he had ever at-
tended," so he wrote back from France. "Nice war,
nice people, nice country, nice everything," he said
on the back of a postcard. To the Reverend James
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J* Daly he wrote, "When I next visit Campion,
I'll teach you (in addition to 'The Boston Burglar')
an admirable song called 'Down in the Heart of
the Gas-House District/ I sing it beautifully."
And "as a common soldier, I have the privilege of
intimacy with the French peasants — ^and I find
them edifyingly good Catholics." But his pleas-
ures in war he has told, as none but the author of
*
"Trees" and "Main Street" could tell them, in his
letters. What he never told must be read between
the lines. When the war was over, he said, he never
wanted again to go far away from Browne's Chop
House and Shanley's Bar. Though it is firmly held
in the background, there is in all that he wrote from
France, it seems to me, a reflection that his life was,
so to say, somewhat in disarray. And clearly
enough, though proudly, too, in the few poems
that he sent back he spoke his body's pain:
Upon his will he binds a radiant chain,
For Freedom's sake he is no longer free.
It is his task, the slave of liberty.
With his own blood to wipe away a stain.
That pain may cease, he yields his flesh to pain,
To banish war, he must a warrior be;
He dwells in Night, eternal Dawn to see.
And gladly dies, abimdant life to gain.
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And:
My shoulders adie beneath my pack
(Lie easier. Cross, upon His back) •
I march with feet that bum and smart
(Tread, Holy feet, upon my heart) .
Men shout at me who may not speak
(They scourged Thy back and smote Thy dieek).
I may not lift a hand to clear
My eyes of salty drops that sear.
(Then shall my fickle soul forget
Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat?)
My rifle hand is stiff and numb
(From Thy pierced palm red rivers come)'.
And in the closing lines of this poem certainly is
given, as fully as anything can be told in this world,
the answer to the question, How did the war most
affect Joyce Kilmer? —
Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
Than all the hosts of land and sea.
So let me render back again
This miUionth of Thy gift. Amen.
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Though he said, "I have very little chance to read
contemporary poetry out here," he did read, as he
says, "what do you suppose? The ^Oxford Book of
English Verse/" And he hoped that contem-
porary poetry was
reflecting the virtues which are blossoming on the
blood-soaked soil of this land — courage, and self-
abnegation, and love, and faith — ^this last not faith
in some abstract goodness, but faith which God
Himself founded and still rules. France has turned
to her ancient faith with more passionate devotion
than she has shown for centuries. I believe that
America is learning the same lesson from war, and
is cleansing herself of cynicism and pessimism and
materialism and the lust for novelty which has
hampered our national development. I hope that
our poets abeady see this tendency and rejoice in
it— if they do not they are unworthy of their craft.
"Just what effect the war would have had on Bal-
mer had he been spared is of course an entirely elu-
sive topic," has said one very able and on the whole
most valuable commentator, speaking from the
testimony then in hand, and voicing, I fancy, an
idea still rather general. It is not now, I think, an
elusive topic at all, but a matter as plain as a pike-
staff. And the matter is, by the way, the second of
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the two most indispensable pages in Kilmer's story.
It is a page in which his character imderwent an-
other metamorphosis as consequential in its effect
on his talent even, if that could be possible, as his
conversion to the Catholic faith.
Kilmer left the United States a professional
writer from his twenty-third year, and one of the
most accomplished, prolific and industrious jour-
nalists of his day. Writing with him had become a
habit almost as natural as speech. It was his inten-
tion when he left New York to write a war book.
He discussed this project with his publishers even
so definitely as to have settled upon a title : "Here
and There With the Fighting Sixty-Ninth." As
time passed it became puzzling why no "copy" of
any kind came from him. And as still more time
passed this matter assimied for me an element of
more than considerable mystery. It was incompre-
hensible because none of the reasons which would
ordinarily apply in such a situation explained Kil-
mer's case to me. If it had been anyone else I
should have concluded that he was unable to find
time to write anything. But precisely the point
about Kilmer was that he did the impossible : it was
quite his habit to, in the racy phrase, "get away
vith" situations which would have floored anyone
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else. It was to my mind an illogical hjrpothesis that
he could be frustrated by obstacles. And I felt
that, inexplicable as it was for Kilmer to fail in
anything or to neglect any opportunity, he was
here failing in justice to his career. How was it in
fact? As it had always been. He was receiving the
light opened to him. There could not be, I submit,
any more telling proof that he had genius, the ca*
pacity to become an absolutely great writer, thai^
this: that in this war which has prompted more peo-
ple to write, and has produced more "copy" than
nearly all the other events of history put together,
he ceased altogether to be a journalist of any kind;
that is, even the instinct of the journalist dropped
from him, when he touched it.
He had had no thought, he says, of attempting to
report the war: "If I had, I'd have come over as a
correspondent instead of as a soldier." All his days
he had been trying to get closer and closer to the
heart of life. In the war his profound instinct for
humanity foimd fulfilment. Of his close comrades
he writes: "Say a prayer for them all, they're brave
men and good, and splendid company. Danger
shared together and hardships mutually borne de-
velops in us a sort of friendship I never knew in
civilian life, a friendship clean of jealousy and
MEMOIR
gossip and envy and suspicion — a fine, hearty, roar-
ing, mirthful sort of thing, like an open fire of whole
pine-trees in a giant's castle."
He was at present "a poet trying to be a soldier."
"To tell the truth, I am not at all interested in writ-
ing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the ex-
pression of something beautiful. And I see daily
and nightly the expression of beauty in action in-
stead of words, and I find it more satisfactory."
"My days of hack writing are over, for a time at
least." Upon his return to civilian life his civilian
work "may be straight reporting." As for "that
mob of war writers (thank God — let me pharisaic-
ally say — ^that I am not one of them) ." The book?
"The only sort of book I care to write about the war
is the sort people will read after the war is over — ^a*
century after it is over!"
Kiliner's "Holy Ireland," a sketch of a lodging
for the night enjoyed by a Uttle group of Irish-
American soldiers at a farmhouse in France, is the '
only piece of prose writing of any extent at all that
came from him overseas. He himself wrote of it to
his publishers: "I sent you a prose sketch *Holy
Ireland,' which represents the best prose writing I
can do nowadays." It is immistakably a piece of
literature, that is to say, though slight enough in
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substance, a work of firm and exquisite and endur-
ing art.
In a letter to the Reverend Edward F. Garesche,
S.J.9 one of the last he wrote, the following para-
graphs occur:
I have written very little — ^two prose sketches and
two poems — since I left the States, but I have a
rich store of memories. Not that what I write
matters — I have discovered, since some unforget-
table experiences, that writing is not the tremen-
dously important thing I once considered it. You
will find me less a bookman when you next see me,
and more, I hope, a man.
And he ends with these words : "Pray for me, my
dear Father, that I may love God more and that I
may be imceasingly conscious of Him — ^that is the
greatest desire I have."
Though he gloried in being a private soldier, it is
quite evident, too, that he was charmed with his pro-
motion. "I am now a sergeant,'' appears on the
back of every copy of the well-known "tin-hat"
post-card, and in every letter near this date. In
more than one intimate letter he says: "I'll never be
anything higher. To get a commission I'd have to
go away for three months to school, and then
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MEMOIR
.whether or not I was made an officer — ^I'd be sent to
some outfit other than this, and I don't want to leave
this crowd. I'd rather be a sergeant in the 69th
than a lieutenant in any other regiment in the
world." "A volunteer regiment, the bravest and
best regiment in the army." "I have a new stripe
— an inverted chevron of bright gold on the left cuflF
for six months' service ... .let my children be
proud of it." And, "a long moustache I have."
For a while he had worked in the Adjutant's
Office, having special charge of recording and re-
porting statistics. Then he was no longer ("thank
God I") doing statistics. Someone over here had
said that he had "a bullet-proof job." "I had one,
but succeeded, after two months intriguing, in get-
ting rid of it," "At that time I was just an office
Jhack — ^now I am a soldier, in the most fascinating
branch of the service there is — sheer romance, night
und day — especially night." He had become at-
tached to the Regimental InteUigence Section,
working as an observer — "very amusing work,"
"wonderful life!" — "the finest job in the army I"
But "I don't know what I'll be able to do in civil-
ian life — ^unless I become a fireman I" "I am hav-
ing a delightful time, but it won't break my heart
for tbe war to end."
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I
"Rouge Bouquet" was his "first attempt at versi-
fication in a dug-out." He had lived in "billets,
dug-outs, trenches, observatories and all sorts of
queer places," And at length, he was "(after a
most violent and amusing month) resting (six hours
out of every twenty-four I) in a beautiful place,
among the firs and pines on a lovely mountain top,
from which I can see strange things." "I sleep on a
couch made soft with deftly laid young spruce
boughs and eat at a table set under good, kind
trees." And with that inimitable, irrepressible and
incomparable Kihnerian pleasure he contemplated
what he called "my senility":
I picture myself at sixty, with a long white
moustache, a pale gray tweed suit, a very large
panama hat, I can see my gnarled but beautifully
groomed hands as they tremblingly pour out the
glass of dry sherry which belongs to every old man's
breakfast. I cannot think of myself at seventy or
eighty — I grow hysterical with applause — I am
lost in a delirium of massive ebony canes, golden
snuff-boxes, and dainty silk hats.
"When we first met over here," wrote Kilmer's
friend Charles L. O'Donnell, Chaplain 332d In-
fantry, in a letter to Thomas Walsh which should be
written into the record, "he was in the personnel
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MEMOIR
department of his regiment, having had his time
of service in the field and done some particularly
good work in the intelligence line. He was then
about to go into the intelligence permanently and so
avid of it was he as to be ready to relinquish his
hard-earned sergeant's chevrons. In the event,
however, that sacrifice was not demanded. After
this change in his work he was much more agreeably
placed, in particular he had more freedom and more
time to see his friends. He was worshipped by the
men about him. I have heard them speak with awe
of his coolness and his nerve in scouting patrols in
No Man's Land. As an intelligence man he made
personally a few very valuable discoveries : this was
when I was with him in our comparatively quiet
sector. I can only conceive that he distinguished
himself later in the larger opportunities that came
his way." The letter continues:
We were both in the army but he was also of it.
I was amazed to find him so quickly become a sol-
dier with the soldier's point of view. But he had
seen so much more than I, even then, and each day
in this war is equivalent to long campaigns of other
times. I felt, and was a rookie beside him. He had
got a perspective on his life at home that made him
smile with indulgent pity on some literary aspects
[»3]
MEMOIR
of it. I spoke of what must have been his earlier
views, the good he was doing and the need of doing
it. But he was not ready to relinquish a position he
had bought at the price of suflFering, cold, hunger,
fatigue, with the hourly self denials that military
discipline means. Not that he spoke of these things
in this way, but I knew they had gone into the crea-
tion of his new stand and I knew hi my heart it was
higher ground.
A closer witness is Sergeant-Major Lemist
^ Esler, who served side by side with Kilmer in the
Marne advance. Shortly afterward returned to the
United States for service as an instructor at an
army cantonment, he said in an interview in the
New York Times: "The front was his goal and no
sooner had the regiment reached France than he
made every possible effort to be transferred."
He finally had himself moved to the Intelligence
Department. It was in that department that he
was elevated to the rank of Sergeant. I was supply
sergeant at the time and Joyce Kilmer was a per-
fect trial to me. He would always be doing more
than his orders called for — ^that is, getting much
nearer to the enemy^s positions than any officer
would ever be inclined to send him. Night after
night he would lie out in No Man's Land, crawling
through barbed wires, in an effort to locate enemy
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MEMOIR '
positions, and enemy guns, and tearing his clothes
to shreds. On the following day he would come to
me for a new imiform.
"There was something of what the Scots call *fey'
about him as a soldier," is the testimony of the
chaplain of the 165th Infantry, Father Duffy.
"He was absolutely the coolest and most indifferent
man in the face of danger I have ever seen. It was
not for lack of love of life, for he enjoyed his life as
a soldier — ^his only cross was distance from home.
It was partly from his inborn courage and devotion
-he would not stint his sacrifice-partly his deep
and real belief that what God wills is best."
Once Marshal Foch's advance began, Kilmer
seems to have been constantly in the thick of the
fighting. In the New York Evening Sun of Au-
gust 8 a correspondent told how a party composed
of Major Donovan, Joyce Kilmer and John Kayes
advanced to the edge of a wood and captured a
German dressed in an American imif orm.
"Joyce was one of those soldiers who had a ro-
mantic love of death in battle," Father Duffy has
added, "and it could not have missed him in time."
No, the stars move in their appointed courses ; and
there are certain things written aforetime. While
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MEMOIR
he had life there was a defiant hope among us who
knew his great gift for triumph that somehow this
would see him through, that even over the inevitable
he would prevail. But Destiny would not have been
her immemorial self had she stayed her tragic hand
from this shining figure, type and symbol in his tak-
ing of her unserutable ways with man. And, some-
how, in his death his life was all of a piece, and one
cannot but admire the poetic justice of his end.
Never fear but in the skies
Saints and angels stand
Smiling with their holy eyes
On this new-come band
Your souls shall be where the heroes are
And your memory shine like the morning-star.
Sergeant Kilmer was killed in action near the
Ourcq, July 30, 1918. "He had," runs the report
in The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the
American Expeditionary Force, "volunteered his
services to the major of the foremost battalion be-
cause his own battalion would not be in the lead that
day." From the report of Sergeant Esler and a
letter (printed in the New York Times) to a friend
in New York by Alexander Woollcott, dramatic
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MEMOIR
critic of the Times before his service abroad^ the
facts are established.
At the dawn of a misty Sunday, July 28, the
165th had made a gallant and irresistible charge
across the river and up the hill. In the height of
the great five days battle for the mastery of the
heights which followed Kilmer was killed. It so
happened that he was close to the Major when the
battalion adjutant fell and, in the emergency of the
battle, without commission or appointment, he was
serving as a sort of aid to the battalioil commander.
Discovering that the woods ahead harboured some
machine guns, he had reported this fact, and was
sent in the lead of a patrol to establish their exact lo-
cation. When a couple of hours later the battalion
advanced into the woods to clear the spot of the en-
emy, several of Kilmer's comrades caught sight of
him lying, as if still scouting, with his eyes bent over
a little ridge. So like his living self he was, they
called to him, then ran up — ^to find him dead with a
bullet through his brain. He lies buried, we read,
beside Lieutenant Oliver Ames at the edge of a
little copse that is known as the Wood of the
Burned Bridge, so close to the purling Ourcq that,
standing by the graveside, one could throw a pebble
into its waters* Perhaps ten minutes walk ta the
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MEMOIR
north lies the half obliterated village Seringes, cap-
tured by American troops the night before Kilmer
was killed. Eloquent of affection in the making of
it, the grave is of course, marked by a wooden cross,
on which is written, "Sergeant Joyce Kilmer/'
Then, after the inscription of his company and regi-
ment, is the Ime: "Killed in Action— July 30, 1918."
It is not a rule to bury enlisted men with officers,
but Kilmer had won so much admiration and re-
spect not only from the enUsted men in his company
but also from the officers, that the commander of
the regiment authorised that his grave be dug on the
spot and that he be buried next to the grave of the
heroic Lieutenant who had just lost his life.
Sergeant Woollcott was with the regiment in the
woods the day they came out of the line to catch
their breaths, and the news of Kilmer's death, he
says, "greeted me on every turn. The Captain
under whom he had been serving for several months,
the Major at whose side he fell, stray cooks, dough-
boys, runners — all shook their heads sorrowfully
and talked among themselves of what a good soldier
he had been and what an infinite pity it was that the
bullet had had to single him out. And in such days
as these, there are no platitudes of polite regret.
When men, good men and close pals, are falling
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MEMOIR
about you by hundreds, when every man in the regi-
ment has come out of the fight the poorer for the
loss of not one but many friends, there is no time
to say pretty things about a man just because he
exists no longer. Death is too common to distin-
guish anyone. So the glowing praise and admira-
tion I heard for Joyce was real — every word of it/'
It is, I think, fitting to preserve in a form more
diu*able than its newspaper publication more of this
letter. It continues:
I gathered that his stock among men of all ranks
had been climbing steadily from the first days when
many of them, including myself, felt that he was out
of his own element in a rip-roaring. regiment. As
the regiment's laureate, they all knew him and they
knew, too, that he was at work on a history of the
regiment. He had become quite an institution, with
his arms full of maps as they used to be full of minor
poetry, and his mouth full of that imperishable pipe.
They all knew his verse. I found any number of
men who had only to fish aroimd in their tattered
blouses to bring out the copy of a poem Kilmer
wrote in memory of some of their number who were
killed by a shell in March. You see that there is a
refrain which calls for bugle notes, and I am told
that at the funeral services, where the lines were first
read, the desperately sad notes of "Taps" sounded
faintly from a distant grave when the refrain in-
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MEMOIR
yoked them. The lines were read by Joyce's own
beloved Father DuflFy, and those who were there
told me the tears streamed down the face of every
boy in the regiment. They just blubbered.
VIII
Indeed, such was the power of his spirit over
other men that even now he has become a legend,
his excellence a popular heritage, benefiting and
enriching human life. Writing with the pen of all
those who knew him in his overcoat of glory and
debonair hat, his friend Charles Willis Thompson
says: "I had a great affection and a deep admira-
tion and respect for him, different from that which
I had for anybody else I knew/' And expressing,
I think, the heart of innumerable ones who did not
chance his way. Booth Tarkington says: "But I had
a sense of him as of something fine and of fine
promise. I haven't read much that he wrote; but
it was like knowing that there was a good picture
somewhere in a gallery that I hadn't visited, but
might, some day."
The full beauty of his life is known only to God.
As religion was the first thing in his life let it be the
last thing said of him. In one of his last letters,
he wrote to Sister M. Emerentia of St. Joseph's
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MEMOIR
College, Toronto, Ontario: "Pray that I may love
God more. It seems to me that if I can learn to love
God more passionately, more constantly, without
distractions, that absolutely nothing else can matter.
Except while we are in the trenches I receive Holy
Communion every morning, so it ought to be all the
easier for me to attain this object of my prayers.
I got Faith, you know, by praying for it. I hope to
get Love the same way."
[101]
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POEMS FROM FRANCE
/
ROUGE BOUQUET
IN a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet
There is a new-made grave to-day.
Built by never a spade nor pick
Yet covered with earth ten metres lliick*
There lie many fighting men.
Dead in their youthful prime.
Never to laugh nor love again
Nor taste the Summertime.
For Death came flying through the air
And stopped his flight at the dugout staiTy
Touched his prey and left them there.
Clay to clay.
He hid their bodies stealthily
In the soil of the land they fought to free
And fled away.
Now over the grave abrupt and clear
Three volleys ring;
And perhaps their brave young spirits hear
The bugle sing:
"Gro to sleep 1
Gro to sleep 1
Slumber well where the shell screamed and fell.
[105]
POEMS FROM FRANCE
Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor^
You will not need them any more.
Danger's past;
Now at last.
Go to sleep r
There is on earth no worthier grave ,
To hold the bodies of the brave
Than this place of pain and pride
Where they nobly fought and nobly died.
Never fear but in the skies
Saints and angels stand
Smiling with their holy eyes
On this new-come band.
St. Michael's sword dartii through the air
And touches the aureole on his hair
As he sees them stand saluting there.
His stalwart sons ;
And Patrick, Brigid, Columkill
Rejoice that in veins of warriors still
The Gael's blood nms.
And up to Heaven's doorway floats,
From the wood called Rouge Bouquet^
A delicate cloud of buglenotes
That softly say:
"Farewelll
[106]
ROUGE BOUQUET
Farewell 1
Comrades true, bom anew, peace to yout
Your souls shall be where the heroes are
And yoiu* memory shine like the morning-star.
Brave and dear.
Shield us here.
Farewelir*
[107]
POEMS FROM FRANCE
THE PEACEMAKER
UPON his will he binds a radiant chain.
For Freedom's sake he is no longer free.
It is his task, the slave of Liberty,
With his own blood to wipe away a stain.
That pain may cease, he yields his flesh to pain.
To banish war, he must a warrior be.
He dwells in Night, eternal Dawn to see.
And gladly dies, abundant life to gain.
What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead?
No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled.
Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled, ,
And has for captain Him whose thorn-wreathed
head
Smiles front the Cross upon a conquered world.
[108]
PRAYER OF A SOLDIER IN FRANCE
PRAYER OF A SOLDIER IN FRANCE
M
Y shoulders ache beneath my pack
(Lie easier. Cross, upon His back).
I march with feet that biu*n and smart
(Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart) .
Men shout at me who may not speak
(They scoiu*ged Thy back and smote Thy cheek) •
I may not lift a hand to clear
My eyes of salty drops that sear.
( Then shall my fickle soul forget
Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat?)
My rifle hand is stiff and numb
(From Thy pierced pahn red rivers come) .
Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
Than all the hosts of land and sea.
So let me render back again
This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.
[109]
POEMS FROM FBANCE
WHEN THE SIXTY-NINTH COMES
BACK
THE Sixty-ninth is on its way — ^France heard
it long ago.
And the Germans know we're coming, to give them
blow for blow.
We've taken on the contract, and when the job is
through
We'll let them hear a Yankee cheer and an Irish
ballad too.
The Harp that once through Tara's Halls shall
fill the air with song.
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is
neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the
Kaiser in a sack.
New York will be seen one Irish green when the
Sixty-ninth comes back.
We brought back from the Border our Flag — 'twas
never lost ;
We left behind the land we love, the stormy sea we
crossed.
[110]
THE SIXTY-NINTH COMES BACK
We heard the cry of Belgium, and France the free
and fair.
For where there's work for fighting-men, the Sixty-
ninth is there.
The Harp tiiat once through Tara's Halls shall
fiU the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is
neared by oiu* triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the
Kaiser in a sack.
New York will be seen one Irish green when the
Sixty-ninth comes back.
The men who fought at Marye's Heights will aid us
from the sky.
They showed the world at Fredericksburg how Irish
soldiers die.
At Blackburn Ford they think of us, Atlanta and
BuURun;
There are many silver rings on the old flagstaff but
there's room for another one.
The Harp that once through Tara's HaUs shall
fill the air with song.
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is
neared by our triumphant throng.
[Ill]
POEMS FROM FRANCE
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the
Kaiser in a sack.
New York will be seen one Irish green when the
Sixty-ninth comes back.
Grod rest our valiant leaders dead, whom we cannot
forget;
They'll see the Fighting Irish are the Fighting
Irish yet.
While Ryan, Roe, and Corcoran on History's pages
shine,
A wreath of laurel and shamrock waits the head of
Colonel
The Harp that once through Tara's Halls shall
fill the air with song.
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is
neared by oiu* triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the
Kaiser in a sack.
New York will be seen one Irish green when the
Sixty-ninth comes back.
[112]
MIRAGE DU CANTONMENT
MIRAGE DU CANTONMENT
MANY laughing ladies, leisurely and wise.
Low rich voice, delicate gay cries,
Tea in fragile china cups, ices, macaroons,
Sheraton and Heppelwhite and old thin spoons.
Rather dim paintings on very high walls,
Windows showing lawns whereon the simlight falls.
Pink and silver gardens and broad kind trees.
And f oimtains scattering rainbows at the whim of
a breeze.
Fragrance, mirth and gentleness, a Summer day
In a world that has forgotten everything but play.
[118]
POEMS AT HOME
WARTIME CHRISTMAS
LED by a star, a golden star.
The youngest star, an olden star,
Here the kings and the shepherds are,
Akneeling on the ground.
What did they come to the inn to see?
God in the Highest, and this is He, ^
A baby asleep on His mother's knee
And with her kisses crowned.
Now is the earth a dreary place,
A troubled place, a weary place.
Peace has hidden her lovely face
And turned in tears away.
Yet the sun, through the war-cloud, sees
Babies asleep on their mother's knees.
While there are love and home — ^and these—*
There shall be Christmas Day.
[117]
POEMS AT HOME
MAIN STREET
(ForS.M.L.)
I LIKE to look at the blossomy track of the moon
upon the sea,
But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street used
to be
When it all was covered over with a couple of feet
of snow.
And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing
sleighs would go.
Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves, it
was a pleasant thing.
And its gutters were gay with dandelions early in
the Spring;
I like to think of it white with frost or dusty in the
heat.
Because I think it is humaner than any other street.
A city street that is busy and wide is ground by a
thousand wheels,
And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever
feels:
It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of
work that never ends.
But it cannot be human like Main Street, and recog-
nise its friends.
[118]
MAIN STREET
There were only about a hundred teams on
Street in a day.
And twenty or thuiy people, I guess, and some chil-
dren out to play.
And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a
girl or a boy
That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow
seem to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the
elevated train
They make the weary dty street reverberate with
pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my
heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made be-
neath a butcher's cart»
Grod be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across
the sky.
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever
I have to die.
Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly
Crown,
But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street,
Heaventown.
[lift]
POEMS AT HOME
ROOFS
(For Amelia Josephine Burr)
THE road is wide and the stars are out and the
breath of the night is sweet.
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize
upon my feet.
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the
starlight on my face,
And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a
human dwelling place.
I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to
roam
All up and down the streets of the world and not to
have a home:
The tramp who slept in your bam last night and
left at break of day
Will wander only until he finds another place to
stay.
A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas over-
head;
Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.
[120]
ROOFS
He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as
the sun is high.
But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away
the sky.
If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him
wrong, '
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home
along.
And the only reason a road is good, as every wan-
derer knows.
Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes
to which it goes.
They say that life is a highway and its milestones
are the years,
And now and then there's a toll-gate where you
buy your way with tears.
It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches
broad and far,
Bu,t at last it leads to a golden Town where golden
Houses are.
[121]
POEMS AT HOME
THE SNOWMAN IN THE YARD
(For Thomas Augustine Daly)
THE Judge's house has a splendid porch, with
pillars and steps of stone.
And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that
came from across the seas ;
In the Hales' garage you could put my house and
everything I own,
And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a
row of poplar trees.
Now I have only a little house, and only a little lot.
And only a few square yards of lawn, with dande-
lions starred;
But when Winter comes. I have something there
that the Judge and the Hales have not,
'And it's better worth having than all their wealth
— ^it's a snowman in the yard.
The Judge's money brings architects to make his
mansion fair ;
The Hales have seven gardeners to make their
roses grow ;
The Judge can get his trees from Spain and France
and everywhere.
And raise his orchids under glass in the midst of
all the snow.
[122]
THE SNOWMAN IN THE YARD
But I have something no architect or gardener ever
made,
A thing that is shaped by the busy touch of little
mittened hands :
And the Judge would give up his lonely estate,
where the level snow is laid
For the tiny house with the trampled yard,. the
yard where the snowman stands.
They say that after Adam and Eve were driven
away in tears
To toil and suffer their life-time through, be-
cause of the sin they sinned,
The Lord made Winter to punish them for half
their exiled years.
To chill their blood with the snow, and pierce
their flesh with the icy wind.
But we who inherit the primal curse, and labom*
for our bread.
Have yet, thank God, the gift of Home, though
Eden's gate is barred:
And through the Winter's crystal veil, Love's roses
blossom red,
For him who lives in a house that has a snowman
in the yard.
[128]
POEMS AT HOME
A BLUE VALENTINE
(For Aline)
MONSIGNORE,
Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Femit
Now of the delightful Comi; of Heaven^
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.
It is not, Monsignore,
The fragrant memory of your holy life.
Nor that of your shining and joyous martyrdom.
Which causes me now to address you.
But since this is yoiu* august festival, Monsignore,
It seems appropriate to me to state
According to a venerable and agreeable custom,
That I love a beautiful lady.
Her eyes, Monsignore,
Are so blue that they put lovely little blue reflec-
tions
On everything that she looks at.
Such as a wall
Or the moon
Or my heart.
[124]
A BLUE VALENTINE
It is like the light coming through blue stained glass,
Yet not quite like it.
For the blueness is not transparent.
Only translucent.
Her soul's light shines thrdugh,
But her soul cannot be seen.
It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton^
infantile, wise
And noble.
She wears, Monsignore, a blue garment.
Made in the manner of the Japanese.
It is very blue—
I think that her eyes have made it more blue.
Sweetly staining it
As the pressure of her body has graciously given it
form.
Loving her, Monsignore,
I love all her attributes ;
But I believe
That even if I did not love her
I would love the blueness of her eyes,
And her blue garment, made in the manner of the
Japanese.
Monsignore,
I have never before troubled you with a requesl;#
[125]
POEMS AT HOME
The saints whose ears I chiefly worry with my pleas
are the most exquisite and maternal Brigid,
Gallant Saint Stephen, who puts fire in my blood,
And your brother bishop/my patron,
The generous and jovial Saint Nicholas of Ban.
But, of yovu* courtesy, Monsignore, )
Do me this f avom* :
When you this morning make yoiur way
To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with
roses because of her who sits upon it.
When you come to pay yovu* devoir to Our Lady,
I beg you, say to her :
"Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants
yet on earth.
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is espe-
cially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown."
[126]
HOUSES
HOUSES
(For Aline)
WHEN you shall die and to the sky
Serenely, delicately go,
Saint Peter, when he sees you there,
Will clash his keys and say:
"Now talk to her, Sir Christopher I
And hurry, Michelangelo I
She wants to play at building^
And youVe got to help her play I"
Every architect will help erect
A palace on a lawn of cloud.
With rainbow beams and a sunset roof,
And a level star-tiled floor ;
And at your will you may use the skill
Of this gay angelic crowd,
When a house is made you wiU throw it down.
And they'll build you twenty more.
For Christopher Wren and these other men
Who used to build on earth
Will love to go to work again
If they may work for you.
[127]
POEMS AT HOME
"This porch," you'll say, "should go this way I'*
And they'll Wprk for all they're worth,
And they'll come to your palace every morning.
And ask you what to do.
And when night comes down on Heaven-town
(If there should be night up there)
You will choose the house you like the best
Of all that you can see:
And its walls will glow as you drowsily go
To the bed up the golden stair.
And I hope you'll be gentle enough to keep
A room in your house for me.
[128]
IN MEMORY
IN MEMORY
I
SERENE and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within yoiur heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty's face before
A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes.
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder ;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Love's voice is through your song; above and under
And in each note to echo and remain.
II
Because Mankind is glad and brave and young,
Full of gay flames that white and scarlet glow.
All joys and passions that Mankind may know
By you were nobly felt and nobly simg.
Because Mankind's heart every day is wrung
By Fate's wild hands that twist and tear it so,
Therefore you echoed Man's undying woe,
A harp Aeolian on Life's branches hung.
[120]
POEMS AT HOME
tSo did the ghosts of toiling children hover
About the piteous portals of your mind;
your eyes, that looked on glory, could discover
The angry scar to which the world was blind:
And it was grief that made Mankind your lover.
And it was grief that made you love Mankind*
III
Before Christ left the Citadel of Light,
To tread the dreadful way of human birth,
His shadow sometimes fell upon the earth
And those who saw it wept with joy and fright.
''Thou art Apollo, than the sun more bright!'^
They cried. "Our music is of little worth.
But thrill our blood with thy creative mirth.
Thou god of song, thou lord of lyric might 1"
O singing pilgrim ! who could love and follow
Your lover Christ, through even love's despair.
You knew within the cypress-darkened hollow
The feet that on the mountain are so fair.
For it was Christ that was your own Apollo,
And thorns were in the laurel on your hair.
[180]
APOLOGY
APOLOGY
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
FOR blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach.
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach.
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain*
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.
So fools are glad of the folly
That made them weep and sing.
And Keats is thahkf ul for Fanny Brawne
And Drummond for his king.
[181]
POEMS AT HOME
They know that on flinty sorrow
And failure and desire
The steel of their souls was hammered
To bring forth the lyric fire.
Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett^
McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatred of tyrants
Was so insistently fierce.
Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or f act, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!
So not for the Rainbow taken
And the magical White Bird snared
The poets sing grateful carols
In the place to which they have fared ;
But for their lifetime's passion.
The quest that was fruitless and long.
They chorus their loud thanksgiving
^0 the thorn-crowned Master of Song.
[182]
THE PROUD POET
THE PROUD POET
(For Shaemas O'Sheel)
ONE winter night a Devil came and sat upon
my bed.
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was
full of crime.
**Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroi-
dery?" he said,
''For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that
makes a rhyme !"
*Tou little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to
Hell,
For the idea you express I will not listen
to:
I have trouble enough with poetry and poverty as
well.
Without having to pay attention to orators like
you.
"When you say of the making of ballads and songs
that it is woman's work
Tou forget all the fighting poets that have been
in every land.
There was Byron, who left all his lady-loves to fight
agfunst the Turk,
[188]
POEMS AT HOME
And David, the Singing Eling of the Jews, who
was bom with a sword in his hand.
It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to
the Wars and died.
And Sir PhiKp Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet
as his arm was strong;
And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover
meets his bride.
Because he carried in his soul the courage of his
song.
''And there is no consolation so quickening to the
heart
As the warmth and whiteness that come from the
lines of noble poetry.
It is strong joy to read it when the wounds of the
spirit smart.
It puts the flame in a lonely breast where only
ashes be.
It is strong joy to read it, and to make it is a thing
That exalts a man with a sacreder pride than any
pride on earth.
For it makes him kneel to a broken slave and set his
foot on a king,
And it shakes the walls of his little soul with the
echo of Grod's mirth.
[184]
THE PROUD POET
**There was the |ioet Homer had the sorrow to be
blind,
Yet a hundred people with good eyes would listen
to him all night ;
For they took great enjoyment in the heaven of his
mind, '
And were glad when the old blind poet let them
share his powers of sight.
And there was Heine lying on his mattress all day
long,
He had no wealth, he had no friends, he had no
joy at all.
Except to pour his sorrow into little cups of song.
And the world finds in them the magic wine that
his broken heart let f alL
"And these are only a couple of names from a list of
a thousand score
Who have put their glory on the world in poverty
and pain.
And the title of poet's a noble thing, worth living
and dying for.
Though all the devils oil earth and in Hell spit
at me their disdain.
It is stem work, it is perilous work, to thrust your
hand in the sun
[185]
POEMS AT HOME
And puU out a spark of immortal flame to warm
the hearts of men :
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose
task is never done.
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing
fire again."
[186]
LIONEL JOHNSON
LIONEL JOHNSON
(For the Rev. John J. Burke, C.S.P.)
THERE was a murkier tinge in London's air
As if the honest fog blushed black for shame.
Fools sang of sin, for other fools' acclaim,
And Milton's wreath was tossed to Baudelaire,
'the flowers of evil blossomed everjrw^here.
But in their midst a radiant lily came,
Candescent, pure, a cup of living flame.
Bloomed for a day, and left the earth more fair.
And was it Charles, thy "fair and fatal Eling,"
Who bade thee welcome to the lovely land?
Or did Lord David cease to harp and sing
To take in his thine emulative hand?
Or did Our Lady's smile shine forth, to bring
Her lyric Ejiight within her dioir to stand?
[187]
POEMS AT HOME
FATHER GERARD HOPKINS, S J.
WHY didst thou carve thy speech laboriously.
And match and blend thy words with
curious art?
For Song, one saith, is but a human heart
Speaking aloud, undisciplined and free.
Nay, Grod be praised. Who fixed thy task for theel
Austere, ecstatic craftsman, set apart
From all who traffic in Apollo's mart.
On thy phrased paten shall the Splendour bet
Now, carelessly we throw a rhyme to God,
Singing BUs praise when other songs are done*
But thou, who knewest paths Teresa trod.
Losing tiiyself, what is it thou hast won?
O bleeding feet, with peace and glory shod I
O happy moth, tibat flew into the Sunt
[188]
GATES AND DOORS
GATES AND DOORS
(For Richardson Little Wright)
THERE was a gentle hostler
(And blessed be his name!)
He opened up the stable
The night Our Lady came.
Our Lady and Saint Joseph,
He gave them food and bed.
And Jesus Christ has given him
' A glory round his head.
So let the gate swing open
However poor the yard^
Lest weary people visit you
And find their passage barred;
Unlatch the door at midnight
And let your lantern's glow
Shine out to guide the traveUef's feet
To you across the sndw.
There was a courteous hostler
(He is in Heaven to-night)
He held Our Lady's bridle
And helped her to alight;
I
/
[189]
POEMS AT HOME
He spread clean straw before her
Whereon she might he down.
And Jesus Christ has given him
An everlasting crown.
Unlock the door this evening
And let your gate swing wide.
Let all who ask for shelter
Come speedily inside.
What if your yard be narrow?
What if your house be small?
There is a Guest is coming
Will glorify it all.
There was a joyous hostler
Who knelt on Christmas mom
Beside the radiant manger
Wherein his Lord was bom.
His heart was full of laughter,
His soul was full of bliss
When Jesus, on His Mother's lap,
Gave him His hand to kiss.
[140]
Unbar your heart this evening
And keep no stranger out.
Take from your soul's great portal
The barrier of doubt.
]
GATES AND DOORS
To humble folk and weary
Give hearty welcoming j
Your breast shall be to-morrow
The cradle of a King.
i
i
S
[Ul]
A
POEMS AT HOME
THE ROBE OF CHRIST
(For Cecil Chesterton)
T the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced»
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
When the Devil comes in his proper form
To the chamber where I dwell,
I know him and make the Sign of the Cross
Which drives him back to Hell.
And when he comes like a friendly man
And puts his hand in mine,
The fervour in his voice is not
From love or joy or wine.
And when he comes like a woman.
With lovely, smiling eyes,
Black dreams float over his golden head
Like a swarm of carrion flies.
Now many a million tortured souls
In his red halls there be :
Why does he spend his subtle craft
In hunting after me?
[142]
THE ROBE OF CHRIST
^SjngSy queens and crested warriors
Whose memory rings through timet
These are his prey, and what to him
Is this poor man of rhyme.
That he, with such laborious skill,
Should change from rdle to rdle.
Should daily act so many a part
To get my little soul?
Oh, he can be the forest,
And he can be the sun.
Or a buttercup, or an hour of rest
When the weary day is done.
I saw him through a thousand veilsy
And has not this sufficed?
Now, must I look on the Devil robed
lu the radiant Robe of Christ?
He comes, and his face is sad and mild.
With thorns his head is crowned ;
There are great bleeding wounds in his feet.
And in each hand a wound.
How can I tell, who am a f ool^
If this be Christ or no?
Those bleeding hands outstretched to me!
Those eyes that love me sol
[148]
POEMS AT HOME
I see the Robe — ^I look — ^I hope — •
I fear — ^but there is one
Who will direct my troubled mind;
Christ's Mother knows her Son.
O Mother of Grood Comisel, lend
Intelligence to me I
Encompass me with wisdom^
Thou Tower of Ivory I
'^This is the Man of Lies/' she says,
'T)isguised with fearful art :
He has the wounded hands and f eet.
But not the wounded heart.'^
Beside the Cross on Calvary
She watched them as they diced.
She saw the Devil join the game
And win the Robe of Christ.
/
[U4]
THE SINGING GIRL
THE SINGING GIRL
(For the Rev. Edward F. Garesch^, SJ.y
THERE was a Cttle maiden
In blue and silver drest.
She sang to Grod in Heaven
And God within her breast.
It flooded me with pleasure,
It pierced me like a sword,
When this young maiden sang: '^My soul
Doth magnify the Lord/'
The stars sing all together
And hear the angels sing,
But they said they had never heard
So beautiful a thing.
Saint Mary and Saint Joseph^
And Saint Elizabeth,
Pray for us poets now
And at the hour of death.
[145]
POEMS AT HOME
/
THE ANNUNCIATION
(For Helen Parry Eden)
**TT AIL Mary, full of grace," the Angel saith.
XX Our Lady bows her head, and is ashamed ;
She has a Bridegroom Who may not be named.
Her mortal flesh bears Him Who conquers death.
Now in the dust her spirit grovelleth ;
Too bright a Sun before her eyes has flamed.
Too fair a herald joy too high proclaimed,
And human lips have trembled in God's breath.
O Mother-Maid, thou art ashamed to cover
With thy white self, whereon no stain can be.
Thy God, Who came from Heaven to be thy Lover,
Thy God, Who came from Heaven to dwell in
thee.
About thy head celestial legions hover.
Chanting the praise of thy humility.
nm
ROSES
ROSES
(For Katherine Br^gy)
I WENT to gather roses and twine them in a
ring.
For I would make a posy, a posy for the 'King.
I got an hmidred roses, the loveliest there be.
From the white rose vine and the pink rose bush and
from the red rose tree.
But when I took my posy and laid it at His feet
I found He had His roses a million times more
sweet.
There was a scarlet blossom upon each foot and
hand,
!Ajid a great pink rose bloomed from His side for
the healing of the land.
Now of this fair and awful King there is this marvel
told.
That He wears a crown of linkhd thorns instead
of one of gold.
Where there are thorns are roses, and I saw a line
of red,
A little wreath of roses around His radiant head.
[147]
POEMS AT HOME
A red rose is His Sacred Hearty a white rose is His
face^
And His breath has turned the barren world to a
rich and flowery place.
He is the Rose of Sharon, His gardener am I,
And I shall drink His fragrance in Heaven when
I
[M8]
THE VISITATION
TfiE VISITATION
(For Louise Imogen Guiney)
THERE is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his
King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring
Before mankind the Glory of the skies.
Her cousin feels her womb's sweet burden rise
And leap with joy, and she comes forth to sing.
With trembling mouth, her words of welcoming.
She knows her hidden Grod, and prophesies.
Saint John, pray for us, weary souls that tarry
Where life is withered by sin's deadly breath.
Pray for us, whom the dogs of Satan harry.
Saint John, Saint Anne, and Saint Elizabeth.
And, Mother Mary, give us Christ to carry
Within our hearts, that we may conquer death.
[149]
POEMS AT HOME
MUI-TIPLICATION
(For S. M. E.)
I TAKE my leave^ with sorrow, of Him I iove so
well;
I look my last upon His small and radiant prison-
cell;
O happy lampi to serve Him with never ceasing
lightl
happy flame I to tremble forever in His sight I
1 leave the holy quiet for the loudly human train,
And my heart that He has breathed upon is filled
with lonely pain.
King, O Friend, O Lover! What sorer grief
can be
In all the reddest depths of Hell than banishment
from Thee?
■
But from my window as I speed across the sleeping
land
1 see the towns and villages wherein His houses
stand.
Above the roofs I see a cross outlined against the
night, ,
And I know that there my Lover dwells in His
sacramental might.
[150]
MUIiTIPLICATION
Dominions kneel before Him^ and Powers kiss
His feet.
Yet for me He keeps His weary watch in the tur-
moil of the street :
The King of £ings awaits me, wherever I may go,
O who am I that He should deign to love and serve
me so?
cm]
POEMS AT HOME
'1
THANKSGIVING
(For John Bunker)
THE roar of the world is in my ears.
Thank God for the roar of the world I
Thank Grod for the mighty tide of fears
Against me always hm'ledl
Thank Grod for the bitter and ceaseless strife.
And the sting of His chastening rodl
Thank Grod for the stress and the pain of lif e»
And Oh, thank God for God!
[152]
THE THORN
THE THORN
(For the Rev. Charles L. OT)oimell, CS.C.)
THE garden of Girod is a radiant place^ .
And every flower has a holy face:
Our Lady like a lily bends above the cloudy sod,
But Saint Michael is the thorn on the rose-bush of
God.
David is the song upon God's lips,
And Our Lady is the goblet that He sips :
And Gabriel's the breath of His command,
But Saint Michael is the sword in Grod's right hand.
The Ivory Tower is fair to see.
And may her walls encompass me I
But when the Devil comes with the thunder of his
might.
Saint Michael, show me how to fight!
[158]
POEMS AT HOME
I
THE BIG TOP
THE boom and blare of the big brass band is
cheering to my heart
And I like the smell of the trampled grass and
elephants and hay.
I take off my hat to the acrobat with his delicate,
strong art,
And the motley mirth of the chalk-faced clown
drives all my care away.
I wish I could feel as they must feel, these players
brave and fair,
Who nonchalantly juggle death before a staring
throng.
It must be fine to walk a line of silver in the air
And to cleave a himdred feet of space with a
gestiu*e like a song.
Sir Henry Irving never knew a keener, sweeter
thriU
Than that which stirs the breast of him who
turns his painted face
To the circUng crowd who laugh aloud and clap
hands with a will
As a tribute to the clown who won the great
wheel-barrow race.
[154]
THE BIG TOP
Now> one shall work in the living rock with a mallet
and a knife,
And another shall dance on a big white horse that
canters round a ring,
By another's hand shall colours stand in similitude
of life ;
And the hearts of the three shaU be moved by one
mysterious high thing.
For the sculptor and the acrobat and the painter
, are the same.
They know one hope, one fear, one pride, one
sorrow and one mirth.
And they take delight in the endless fight for the
fickle world's acclaim;
For they worship art above the clouds and serve
]ber on the earth.
But you, who can build of the stubborn rock no
form of loveliness.
Who can never mingle the radiant hues to make
a wonder live.
Who can only show your little woe to the world in a
rhythmic dress—
What kind of a coimterpart of you does the three-
ring circus give?
[155]
POEMS AT HOME
Well — here in a little side-show tent to-day some
people stand.
One is a giant, one a dwarf, and one has a figured
skin.
And each is scarred and seared and marred by
Fate's relentless hand.
And each one shows his grief for pay^ with a sort
of pride therein.
You put your sorrow into rhyme and want the
world to look ;
You sing the news of your ruined hope and want
the world to hear;
Their woe is pent in a canvas tent and yours in a
printed book.
O, poet of the broken heart, salute your brothers
here !
[156]
MID-OCEAN IN WAR-TIME
MID-OCEAN IN WABrTIME
(For My Mother)
THE fragile splendour of the level sea^
The moon's serene and silver-veiled face,
Mike of this vessel an enchanted place
Full of white mirth and golden sorcery.
Now, for a time, shall careless laughter he
Blended with song, to lend song sweeter grace.
And the old stars, in their unending race,
ShaU heed and envy young humanity.
And yet to-night, a hundred leagues away,
These waters hlush a strange and awful red.
Before the moon, a cloud obscenely grey
Rises from decks that crash with flying lead.
And these stars smile their immemorial way
On waves that shroud a thousand newly dead I
[157]
POEMS AT HOHB
QUEEN ELIZABETH SPEAKS
MY hands were stained with blood, my heart
was proud and cold,
My soul is black with shame . . . but I gave
Shakespeare gold.
So after aeons of flame, I may, by grace of God,
Rise up to kiss the dust that Shakespeare's feet have
trod.
[158]
IN MEMORY OF RUPERT BROOKE
IN MEMORY OF RUPERT BROOKE
IN alien earth, across a troubled sea,
His body lies that wias so fair and young.
His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung;
His arm is still, that struck to make men free.
But let no cloud of lamentation be
Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung.
Wei keep the echoes of his golden tongue^
We keep the vision of his chivalry.
So Israel's joy, the loveliest of kings.
Smote now his harp, and now the hostile horde.
To-day the starry roof of Heaven rings
With psalms a soldier made to praise his Lord;
And David rests beneath Eternal wings.
Song on his lips, and in his hand a sword.
[159]
POEMS AT HOME
THE NEW SCHOOL
(For My Mother)
THE halls that were loud with the merry tread
of young and careless feet
Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem
like holiday.
And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the
dreaming street
Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the
doves away.
The dust is on book and on empty desk, and the
tennis-racquet and balls
Lie still in their lonely locker and wait for a game
that is never played.
And over the study and lecture-room and the river
and meadow falls
A stem peace, a strange peace, a peace that War
has made.
For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with an
epaulet.
And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat is
defter with a sword,
[160]
THE NEW SCHOOL
And some of the lads will laugh to-day where the
trench is red and wet,
Sind some will win on the bloody field the ac-
colade of the LfOrd.
They have taken their youth and mirth away from
the study and playing-ground
To a new school in an alien land beneath an alien
sky;
Out in the smoke and roar of the fight their lessons
and games are found,
And they who were learning how to live are learn-
ing how \o die.
And after the golden day has come and the war is
at an end,
A slab of bronze on the chapel wall will tell of
the noble dead. \
And every name on that radiant list will be the
name of a friend,
A name that shall through the centuries in grate-
ful prayers be said.
And there will be ghosts in the old school, brave
ghosts with laughing eyes.
On the field with a ghostly cricket-bat, by the
stream with a ghostly rod;
[Ml]
POEMS AT HOME
They wiD touch the hearts of the living with a flame
that sanctifies,
A flame that they took with strong yomig hands
from the altar-fires of Grod.
[162]
- --■ ■
EASTER WEEK
EASTER WEEK
(In memory of Joseph Mary Plmikett)
{^^Bomantic Irelanffs dead and gone,
Ifs toith (yLeary in the grave.^)
WnxiAM Butler Yeatb.
"^Ty OMANTIC Ireland's dead and gone,
Xv It's with O'Leary in the grave/'
Then, Yeats, what gave that Easter dawn
A hue so radiantly brave?
There was a rain of blood that day.
Red rain in gay blue April weather.
It blessed the earth tiU it gave birth
To valour thick as blooms of heather.
Romantic Ireland never dies I
O'Leary lies in fertile ground.
And songs and spears throughout the years
Rise up where patriot graves are found.
Immortal patriots newly dead
And ye that bled in bygone years.
What banners rise before your eyes?
What is the tune that greets your ears?
[168]
POEMS AT HOME
The young Republic's banners smile
For many a mile where troops convene.
O'Connell Street is loudly sweet
With strains of Wearing of the Green.
The soil of Ireland throbs and glows
With life that knows the hour is here
To strike again like Irishmen
For that which Irishmen hold dear.
Lord Edward leaves his resting place
And Sarsfield's face is glad and fierce.
See Emmet leap from troubled sleep
To grasp the hand of Padraic Pearset
There is no rope can strangle song
And not for long death takes his toll.
No prison bars can dim the stars
Nor quicklime eat the living souL
Romantic Ireland is not old.
For years untold her youth will shine.
Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread.
The blood of martyrs is her wine*
[164]
THE CATHEDRAL OP RHEIMS
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS
(From the French of Emile Verhaeren)
HE who walks through the meadows of Cham-
pagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear.
Sees it draw near
Like some great moimtain set upon the plain.
From radiant dawn until the close of day.
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy paU
Upon his way.
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
Ancient French temple I thou whose hundred kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls.
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train.
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
[165]
POEMS AT HOME
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new.
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France's love and
pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base ;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting suh sees thousandfold his face;
Sorrow and joy, in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Aroimd thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames.
The brows of saints with venerable names.
And in the night erect a fiery wall.
A great but sLt (eryour iL. in <dl
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb.
And know that down below, beside the Rhine-
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line —
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear ;
Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear.
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come, and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the Grerman troops descend.
[166]
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS
They are turned back, and driven to Champagne*
And now, as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day.
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour.
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace;
The stately arches soaring into space.
The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled.
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places.
The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces.
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord
^Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.
O beauty slain, O glory in the dusti
[167]
POEMS AT HOME
Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul arose a piteous moan.
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed.
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath ;
The horror everywhere did range and swell.
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell.
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing.
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene ;
The Grerman army, fighting for its life.
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight.
Here, in the solemn night.
The old cathedral, to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
[168]
KINGS
KINGS
(For the Rev. James B. DoUard)
THE Kings of the earth are men of might.
And cities are burned for their delight.
And the skies rain death in the silent night,
And the hills belch death all day I
But the King of Heaven, Who made them all.
Is fair and gentle, and very small;
He lies in the straw, by the oxen's stall —
Let them think of Him to-day!
[169]
POEMS AT HOME
THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED
(For Alden March)
WITH drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach.
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow.
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay.
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
Death's livid, dreadful white.
White as the ice that clove her
That unf orgotten day.
Among her pallid sisters
The grim Titanic lay.
[170]
THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED
And through the leagues above her
She looked aghast, and said:
''What is this living ship that comes
Where everjr ship is dead?"
The ghostly vessels trembled
From ruined stem to prow;
What was this thing of terror
That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be.
But red, like living flame 1
The pale green waves about her
Were swiftly, strangely dyed.
By the great scarlet stream that flowed
From out her woimded side.
And all her decks were scarlet
And all her shattered crew.
She sank among the white ghost ships
And stained them through and through.
The grim Titanic greeted her.
''And who art thou?" she said;
''Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet
Arrayed in living red?
[171]
POEMS AT HOME
We are the ships of sorrow
Who spend the weary night.
Until the dawn of Judgment Day,
Obscure and still and white.''
'^ay/' said the scarlet visitor,
''Though I sink through the sea,
A ruined thing that was a ship,
I sink not as did ye.
For ye met with your destiny
By storm or rock or fight.
So through the lagging centuries
Ye wear your robes of white.
''But never crashing iceberg
Nor honest shot of foe.
Nor hidden reef has sent me
The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters.
My blood that is like flame.
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
A deed without a name.
"I went not forth to battle,
I carried friendly men.
The children played about my decks.
The women sang — ^and then —
[172]
THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED
And then — ^the sun blushed scarlet
And Heaven hid its f ace.
The world that God created
Became a shameful place!
"My wrong cries out for vengeance.
The blow that sent me here
Was aimed in Hell. My dyin^scream
Has reached Jehovah's ear.
Not all the seven oceans
Shall wash away that stain ;
Upon a brow that wears a crown
I am the brand of Cain.''
When God's great voice assembles
The fleet on Judgment Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships wiU rise
In sea and strait and bay.
Though they have lain for ages
Beneath the changeless flood.
They shall be white as silver.
But one — shall be like blood.
[ITS]
POEMS AT HOME
THE TWELVE-FORTY-FIVE
(For Edward J. Wheeler)
WITHIN the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head.
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waveslmadly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars /
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts —
And passes on, and leaves no trace.
For darkness holds its ancient place,
Serene and absolute, the king
Unchanged, of every living thing.
The houses lie obscure and still
In Rutherford and Carlton Hill.
Our lamps intensify the dark
Of slumbering Passaic Park.
And quiet holds the weary feet
That daily tramp through Prospect Street.
What though we clang and clank and roar
Through all Passaic's streets ? No door
[174]
•V
THE TWELVE-FORTY-FIVE
Will open, not an eye will see
Who this loud vagabond may be.
Upon my crimson cushioned seat.
In manufactured light and heat»
I feel imnatural and mean.
Outside the towns are cool and clean;
Curtained awhile from sound and sight
They take Grod*s gracious gift of night.
The stars are watchful over them.
On Chfton as on Bethlehem
The angels, leaning down the sky,
Shed peace and gentle dreams. And I —
I ride, I blasphemously ride
Through all the silent countryside.
The engine's shriek, the headlight's glare»
Pollute the still nocturnal air.
The cottages of Lake View sigh
And sleeping, frown as we pass by.
Why, even strident Paterson
Rests quietly as any nun.
Her f ooUsh warring children keep
The grateful armistice of sleep.
For what tremendous errand's sake
Are we so blatantly awake?
What precious secret is our freight?
What. king must be abroad so late?
[175}
POEMS AT HOME
Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night
And we rush forth to give him fight.
Or else» perhaps, we speed his way
To some remote unthinking prey*
Perhaps a woman writhes in pain
And listens — ^listens for the train I
The train, that like an angel sings.
The train, with healing on its wings.
Now "Hawthorne 1" the conductor cries.
My neighbor starts and rubs his eyes.
He hurries yawning through the car
And steps out where the houses are.
This is the reason of our questi
Not wantonly we break the rest
Of town and village, nor do we
Lightly profane night's sanctity.
What Love commands the train fulfills^
And beautiful upon the hills
Are these our feet of burnished steeL
Subtly and certainly I feel
That Glen Rock welcomes us to her
And silent Ridgewood seems to stir
And smile, because she knows the train
Has brought her children back again.
We carry people home — ^and so
God speeds us, wheresoever we go.
[176]
THE TWELVE-FORTY-FIVE
Hohokus, Waldwick, Allendale
Lift sleepy heads to give us hail.
In Ramsey, Mahwah, Suffem stand
Houses that wistfully demand
A father — ^son — some hiunan thing
That this, the midnight train, may bring.
The trains that traveFin the day
They hurry folks to work or play.
The midnight train is slow and old»
But of it let this thing be told.
To its high honor be it said.
It carries people home to bed.
My cottage lamp shines white and clear.
Grod bless the train that brought me here.
[177]
POEMS AT HOME
PENNIES
A FEW long-hoarded pennies in his hand^
Behold him stand ;
A kilted Hedonist, perplexed and sad.
The joy that once he had,
The first delight of ownership is fled.
He bows his little head.
Ah, cruel Time, to kill
That splendid thrill!
Then in his tear-dimmed eyes
New lights arise.
He drops his treasm^ed pennies on the ground^
They roll and bound
And scattered, rest.
Now with what zest
He runs to find his errant wealth againi
So unto men
Doth God, depriving that He may bestow.
Fame, health and money go.
But that they may, new found, be newly sweet.
Yea, at His feet
Sit, waiting us, to their conceahnent bid,
AJl they, our lovers, whom His Love hath hid.
[178]
PENNIES
Lo» comfort blooms on paJn, and peace on strif e»
And gain on loss.
What is the key to Everlasting Life?
A blood-stained Cross.
[m]
POEMS AT HOME
I
TREES
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)
THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day.
And lifts her leafy arms to pray ;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair ;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me.
But only God can make a tree.
[1803
STABS
STARS
(For the Rev. James J. Daly; S J*.)
BRIGHT stars, yellow stars, flashing through
the air, '
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through.
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Gay stars, little stars, you are little eyes.
Eyes of baby angels playing in the skies.
Now and then a winged child turns his merry face
Down toward the spinning world — ^whata funny
place I
Jesus Christ came from the Cross (Christ receive
my soull)
In each perfect hand and foot there was a bloody
hole.
Four great iron spikes there were, red and never
dry,
Michael plucked them from the Cross and set them
-- in the sky.
[181]
/
POEMS AT HOME
Christ's Troop, Mary's Guard, Grod's own men.
Draw your swords and strike at Hell and strike
again.
Every steel-bom spark that flies where God's battles
are.
Flashes past the face of Grod, and is a star.
[182]
OLD POETS
OLD POETS
(For Robert Cortes Hoffiday )
IF I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree»
No grove of impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.
I'd go where the old oaks gather^
Serene and good and strong.
And they would not sigh and tremble
And vex me with a song.
The pleasantest sort of poet
Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and wrinkles
About his kind old eyes.
For these young flippertigibbets
A-rhyming their hours away
They won't be still like honest men
And listen to what you say.
The young poet screams forever
About his sex and his soul;
But the old man listens, and smokes his pipe.
And polishes its bowl.
[188]
\
POEMS AT HOME
There should be a club for poets
Who have come to seventy year.
They should sit in a great hall drinking
Red wine and golden beer.
They would shujQ9e in of an evening.
Each one to his cushioned seat.
And there would be mellow talking
And silence rich and sweet.
There is no peace to be taken
With poets who are young,
For they worry about the wars to be fought
And the songs that must be sung.
But the old man knows that he's in his chair
And that God's on His throne in the sky.
So he sits by the fire in comfort
And he lets the world spin by.
[184]
DELICATESSEN
DELICATESSEN
WHY is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we twitter at his name
Wh^ come to buy his curious wares?
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
'And fruit that knew Italian skies.
And figs that ripened by the sea
In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,
strange ^t ,^ts from Gen„«.y.
And currants from a Grecian hill.
He is the lord of goodly things
That make the poor man's tabl^ gay.
Yet of his worth no minstrel sings
And on his tomb there is no bay.
Perhaps he lives and dies unpraised.
This trafficker in humble sweets.
Because his little shops are raised
By thousands in the city streets.
[185]
POEMS AT HOME
Yet stars in greater numbers shine.
And violets in millions grow.
And they in many a golden line
Are sung, as every child must know.
Perhaps Fame thinks his worried eyes.
His wrinkled, shrewd, pathetic f ace.
His shop, and all he sells and buys
Are desperately commonplace.
Well, it is true he has no sword
To dangle at his booted knees.
He leans across a slab of board.
And draws his knife and slices cheese.
He never heard of chivalry.
He longs for no heroic times ;
He thinksrof pickles, olives, tea.
And dollars, nickels, cents and dimes.
His world has narrow walls, it seems;
By counters is his soul confined ;
wares are all his hopes and dreams.
They are the fabric of his mind.
[186]
DELICATESSEN
Yet — ^in a room above the store
There is a woman — and a child
Pattered just now across the floor;
The shopman looked at him and smiled.
For, once he thrilled with high romance
And turned to love his eager voice.
Like any cavalier of France
He wooed the maiden of his choice.
And now deep in his weary heart
Are sacred flames that whitely bum.
He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn.
And when the long day's work is done»
( How slow the leaden minutes ran I)
Home, with his wife and little son»
He is no huckster, but a man I
And there are those who grasp his hand.
Who drink with him and wish him well. ^
O iii no drear and lonely land
Shall he who honours friendship dwell.
[187]
POEMS AT HOME
And in his little shop, who knows
What bitter games of war are played?
Why, daily on each comer grows
A foe to rob him of his trade.
He fights, and for his fireside's sake;
He fights for clothing and for bread:
.The lances of his f oemen make
A steely halo round his head.
He decks his window artfully.
He haggles over paltry sums.
In this strange field his war must be
And by such blows his triumph comes.
What if no trumpet sounds to call
His armed legions to his side?
What if to no ancestral hall
He comes in all a victor's pride?
The scene shall never fit the deed.
Grotesquely wonders come to pass.
The fool shall mount an Arab steed
And Jesus ride upon an ass.
[188]
DELICATESSEN
This man has home and child and wife
And battle set for every day.
This man has God and love and life ;
These stand, all else shall pass away-
O Carpenter of Nazareth,
Whose mother was a village maid.
Shall we, Thy children, blow our breath
In scorn on any humble trade?
Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's climisy dress
The splendour of humanity I
1180]
POEMS AT HOME
SERVANT GIRL AND GROCER'S BOY
H
ER lips' remark was: "'Oh, you kidT'
Her soul spoke thus (I know it did) :
''O king of realms of endless joy» -
My own, my golden grocer's boy,
I am a princess forced to dwell
Within a lonely kitchen cell.
While you go dashing through the land
With loveliness on every hand.
Tour whistle strikes my eager ears
Like music of the choiring spheres.
The mighty earth grows faint and reels
Beneath your thundering wagon wheels.
How keenly, perilously sweet
To cling upon that swaying seat I
How happy she who by your side
May share the splendours of that ride!
Ah, if you will not take my hand
And bear me off across the land,
[190]
SERVANT GIRL AND GROCER'S BOY
Then, traveller troax Arcady,
Remain awhile and comfort me.
What other maiden can you find
So yomig and delicate and kind?
»f
Her lips' remark was : "Oh, you kid I'*
Her soul spoke thus (I know it did) •
[IM]
POEMS AT HOME
WEALTH
(For Aline)
FROM what old ballad, or from what rich frame
Did you descend to glorify the earth?
Was it from Chaucer's singing book you came?
Or did Watteau's small brushes give you birth?
Nothing so exquisite as that slight hand
Could Raphael or Leonardo trace.
Nor could the poets know in Fairyland
The changing wonder of your lyric face.
I would possess a host of lovely things.
But I am poor and such joys may not be.
So God who lifts the poor and humbles kings
Sent loveliness itself to dwell with me.
£192]
MARTIN
MARTIN
WHEN I am tired of earnest men.
Intense and keen and sharp and dever.
Pursuing fame with brush or pen,
Or counting metal disks forever.
Then from the halls of Shadowland,
Beyond the trackless purple sea,
Old Martin's ghost comes back to stand
Beside my desk and talk to me.
Still on his delicate pale face
A quizzical thin smile is showing.
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace,
His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing.
He wears a brilliant-hued cravat,
A suit to match his soft grey hair,
A rakish stick, a knowing hat,
A manner blithe and debonair.
How good that he who always knew
That being lovely was a duty.
Should have gold halls to wander through
And should himself inhabit beauty.
[1»8]
POEMS AT HOME
How like his old unselfish way
To leave those halls of splendid mirth
And comfort those condemned to stay
Upon the dull and sombre earth.
Some people ask: '"What cruel chance
Made Martin's life so sad a story?"
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance.
And wore an overcoat of glory.
A fleck of sunlight in the street,
A horse, a book, a girl who smiled.
Such visions made each moment sweet
For this receptive ancient child.
Because it was old Martin's lot
To be, not make, a decoration.
Shall we then scorn him, having not
His genius of appreciation?
Rich joy and love he got and gave;
His heart was merry as his dress;
Pile laurel wreaths upon his grave
Who did not gain, but was, success 1
[IM]
THE APARTMENT HOUSE
THE APARTMENT HOUSE
SEVERE against the pleasant arc of sky
The great stone box is cruelly displayed.
The street becomes more dreary from its shade.
And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die.
Here suUen convicts in their chains might he,
Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade.
How worse than folly is their labour made
Who cleft the rocks that this might rise on high I
Yet, as I look, I see a woman's face
Gleam from a window far above the street.
This is a house of homes, a sacred place.
By human passion made divinely sweet.
How all the building thrills with sudden grace
Beneath the magic of Love's golden feet 1
[195]
POEMS AT HOME
AS WINDS THAT BLOW AGAINST A
STAR
(For Aline)
NOW by what whim of wanton chance
Do radiant eyes know sombre days?
And feet that shod in light should dance
Walk weary and laborious ways?
But rays from Heaven, white and whole.
May penetrate the gloom of earth ;
And tears but nourish, in your soul.
The glory of celestial mirth.
The darts of toil and sorrow, sent
Against your peaceful beauty, are
As f ooUsh and as impotent
As winds that blow against a star.
[196]
ST. LAURENCE
ST. LAURENCE
WITHIN the broken Vatican
The murdered Pope is lying dead.
The soldiers of Valerian
Their evil hands are wet and red.
Unarmed, unmoved, St. Laurence waits.
His cassock is his only mail.
The troops of Hell have burst the gates.
But Christ is Lord, He shall prevail.
They have encompassed him with steel.
They spit upon his gentle face.
He smiles and bleeds, nor will I'eveal
The Church's hidden treasure-place.
Ah, faithful steward, worthy knight.
Well hast thou done. Behold thy feel
Siiv^e thou hast fought the goodly fight
A martyr's death is fixed for thee.
St. Laurence, pray for us to bear
The faith which glorifies thy name.
St. Laurence, pray for us to share
The wounds of Love's consimiing flame.
[197]
POEMS AT HOME
TO A YOUNG POET WHO KILLED
HIMSELF
WHEN you had played with life a space
And made it drink and lust and sing»
Tou flung it back into Grod's face
And thought you did a noble thing.
"Lo, I have Kved and loved," you said,
"And sung to fools too dull to hear me.
Now for a cool and grassy bed
With violets in blossom near me."
Well, rest is good for weary feet.
Although they ran for no great prize;
And violets are very sweet.
Although their roots are in your eyes.
But hark to what the earthworms say
Who share with you your muddy haven:
"The fight was on — ^you ran away.
You are a qoward and a craven.
The rug is ruined where you bled;
It was a dirty way to diel
To put a bullet through your head
And make a silly woman cryl
[198]
TO A YOUNG POET
You could not vex the merry stars
'Not make them heed you, dead or living.
Not all your puny anger mars
God's irresistible forgiving.
"Yes, God forgives and men forget,
And you're forgiven and forgotten.
You might be gaily sinning yet
And quick and fresh instead of rotten.
And when you think of love and fame
And all that might have come to pass.
Then don't you feel a little shame?
And don't you think you were an ass?"
[199]
POEMS AT HOME
MEMORIAL DAY
**Dulce et decorum est"
THE bugle echoes shrill and sweety
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.
The roses blossom white aad red
On tombs where weary soldiers He;
Flags wave above the honoured dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.
Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel»
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom aad the Right.
May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod.
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of Grod.
In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid.
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a
sword.
[200]
THE ROSARY
THE ROSARY
NOT on the lute, or harp of many strings
Shall all men praise the Master of all song.
Our Kfe is brief, one saith, and art is long;
And skilled must be the laureates of kings.
Silent, O Ups that utter foolish things I
Rest, awkward fingers striking all notes wrong I
How from your toil shall issue, white and strong,
Music like that God's chosen poet sings?
There is one harp that any hand can play.
And from its strings what harmonies arisej
There is one song that any mouth can say, —
A song that lingers when all singing dies.
When on their beads our Mother's children pray,
Immortal music charms the grateful skies.
i
[201]
POEMS AT HOME
VISION
(For Aline)
HOMER, they tell us, was blind and could not
see the beautiful faces
Looking up into his own and reflecting the joy of
his dream,
Yet did he seem
Gifted with eyes that could follow the gods to their
holiest places.
I have no vision of gods, not of Eros with love-
arrows laden,
Jupiter thundering death or of Juno his white-
breasted queen.
Yet have I seen
All of the joy of the world in the innocent heart of
a maiden.
[202]
TO CERTAIN POETS
N
TO CERTAIN POETS
OW is the rhymer's honest trade
A thing for scornful laughter made.
The merchant's sneer, the clerk's disdain.
These are the burden of our pain.
Because of you did this befall.
You brought this shame upon us all.
You little poets mincing there
With women's hearts and women's hair!
How sick Dan Chaucer's ghost must be
To hear you Ksp of "Poesie" I
■
A heavy-handed blow, I think,
Would make your veins drip scented ink.
You strut and smirk your little while
So mildly, delicately vile I
Yom* tiny voices mock God's wrath,
You snails that crawl along His path I
Why, what has God or man to do
With wet, amorphous things like you?
[208]
POEMS AT HOME
lis thing alone you have achieved:
Because of you, it is believed
That all who earn their bread by rhyme
Are like yourselves, exuding slime.
Oh, cease to write, for very shame.
Ere all men spit upon our name 1
Take up your needles, drop your pen.
And leave the poet's craft to men!
[204]
LQVE'S LANTERN
LOVE'S LANTEBN
(For Aline)
BECAUSE the road was steep and long
And through the dark and lonely land,
God set upon my lips a song
And put a lantern in my hand.
Through miles on weary miles of night
That stretch relentless in my way
My lantern bums serene and white.
An unexhausted cup of day.
O golden lights and lights like wine.
How dim your boasted splendours are.
Behold this little lamp of mine ;
It is more starlike than a star I
[205]
POEMS AT HOME
ST. ALEXIS
Patron of Beggars
WE who beg for bread as we daily tread
Country lane and city street.
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright.
And our shrine is a bank of sod.
But still we share St. Alexis' care.
The Vagabond of God.
They gave him a home in purple Rome
And a princess for his bride.
But he rowed away on his wedding day
Down the Tiber's rushing tide.
And he came to land on the Asian strand
Where the heathen people dwell;
As a beggar he strayed and he preached and prayed
And he saved their souls from hell.
Bowed with years and pain he came back again
To his father's dwelling place.
There was none to see who this tramp might be.
For they knew not his bearded face.
[206]
/
ST. ALEXIS
But his father said, '"Give him drink and bread
And a couch underneath the stair."
So Alexis crept to his hole and slept.
But he might not linger there.
For when night came down on the seven-hiUed
town.
And the emperor hurried in,
Saying, 'Xo, I hear that a saint is near
Who will cleanse us of our sin,"
Then they looked in vain where the saint had lain,
For his soul had fled afar,
From his fleshly home he had gone to roam
Where the gold-paved highways are.
We who beg for bread as we daily tread
Country lane and city street,
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright,
And our shrine is a bank of sod.
But still we share St. Alexis' care^
The Vagabond of Gk)dl
£207]
POEMS AT HOME
FOLLY
(For A. K. K.)
WHAT distant mountains thrill and glow
Beneath our Lady Folly's tread?
Why has she left us, wise in woe.
Shrewd, practical, ui)comforted?
We cannot love or dream or sing,
We are too cynical to pray,
There is no joy in anything
Since Lady Folly went away.
•
Many a knight and gentle maid.
Whose glory shines from years gone by.
Through ignorance was unafraid
And as a fool knew how to die.
Saint Folly rode beside Jehanne
And broke the ranks of Hell with her.
And Folly's smile shone brightly on
Christ's plaything. Brother Juniper.
Our minds are troubled and defiled
By study in a weary school.
O for the folly of the child I
The ready coiu'age of the fool I
[208]
FOLLY
Lord, crush our knowledge utterly
^ And make us humble, simple men;
And cleansed of wisdom, let us see
Our Lady Folly's face again.
[20Q3
[210]
POEMS AT HOME
MADNESS
(For Sara Teasdale)
THE lonely f arm, the crowded street
The palace and the slum.
Give welcome to my silent feet
As, bearing gifts, I come.
Last night a beggar crouched alone,
A ragged helpless thing;
I set him on a moonbeam throne —
T6-day he is a king.
Last night a king in orb and crown
Held court with splendid cheer;
To-day he tears his purple gown
And moans and shrieks in fear.
Not iron bars, nor flashing spears.
Not land, nor sky, nor sea.
Nor love's artillery of tears
Can keep mine own from me.
Serene, unchanging, ever fair,
I smile with secret mirth
And in a net of mine own hair
I swing the captive earth.
POETS
POETS
VAIN is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruiaed shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
They only sing who are struck dumb by God.
[211]
POEMS AT HOME
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
N
O longer of Him be it said,
''He hath no place to lay His head.
In every land a constant lamp
Flames by His small and mighty camp.
There is no strange and distant place
That is not gladdened by His face.
And every nation kneels to hail
The Splendour shining through Its veil.
Cloistered beside the shouting street,
Silent, He calls me to His feet.
Imprisoned for His love of me,
He makes my spirit greatly free.
And through my lips that uttered sin
The King of Glory enters in.
[212]
N
TO A BLACKBIRD AND HIS MATE
TO A BLACKBIRD AND HIS MATE
WHO DIED IN THE SPRING
(For Kenton)
AN iron hand has stilled the throats
That throbbed with loud and rhythmic glee
And dammed the flood of silver notes
That drenched the world in melody.
The blosmy apple boughs are yearning
For then- wild choristers' returning.
But no swift wings flash through the tree.
Ye that were glad and fleet and strong,
Shall Silence take you in her net?
And shall Death quell that radiant song
Whose echo thrills the meadow yet?
Burst the frail web about you clinging
And charm Death's cruel hieart with singing
Till with strange tears his eyes are wet.
The scented morning of the year
Is old and stale now ye are gone.
No friendly songs the children hear
Among the bushes on the lawn.
When babies wander out a-Maying
Will ye, their bards, afar be straying?
Unhymned by you, what is the dawn?
[218]
POEMS AT HOME
Nay^ sinoe ye loved ye cannot die.
Above the stars is set your nest.
Through Heaven's fields ye sing and fly
And in the trees of Heaven rest.
And little children in their dreaming
Shall see your soft black plumage gleaming
And smile* by your dear music blest.
1
[214]
THE FOURTH SHEFHEHD
■
THE FOURTH SHEPHEBD
(For Thomas Walsh)
I
ON nights like this the huddled sheep
Are like white clouds upon the grass.
And merry herdsmen guard their sleep.
And chat and watch the big stars pass.
It is a pleasant thing to lie
Upon the meadow on the hill
With kindly fellowship near by-
Of sheep and men of gentle wilL
I lean upon my broken crook
And dream of sheep and grass and men—
shameful eyes that cannot look
On any honest thing again I
On bloody feet I clambered down
And fled the wages of my sin,
1 am the leavings of the town.
And meanly serve its meanest inn.
I tramp the courtyard stones in grief.
While sleep takes man and beast to her.
And every cloud is calling "Thief I"
And every star calls "Murderer I'*
[216]
POEMS AT HOME
The hand of God is sure and strong,
Nor shall a man forever flee
The bitter punishment of wrong.
The wrath of Grod is over me I
With ashen bread and wine of tears
Shall I be solaced in my pain.
I wear through black and endless years
Upon my brow the mark of Cain.
Poor vagabond, so old and mild,
Will they not keep him for a night?
And She, a woman great with child.
So frail and pitiful and white.
Good people, since the tavern door
Is shut to you, come here instead.
See, I have cleansed my stable floor
And piled fresh hay to make a bed.
Here is some milk and oaten cake.
Lie down and sleep and rest you f air.
Nor fear, O simple folk, to take
The bounty of a child of care.
On nights like this the huddled sheep-—
I never saw a night so fair.
How huge the sky is, and how deep I
And how the planets flash and glare I
[216]
THE FOURTH SHEPHERD
At dawn beside my drowsy flock
What winged music I have heard I
But now the clouds with singing rock
As if the sky were turning bird.
O blinding Light, O blinding Light !
Bum through my heart with sweetest pain.
O flaming Song, most loudly bright.
Consume away my deadly stain I
The stable glows against the sky.
And who are these that throng the way?
My three old comrades hasten by
And shining angels kneel and pray.
The door swings wide — ^I cannot
I must and yet I dare not see.
Lord, who am I that I should know — \
Lord, Grod, be merciful to me I
O Whiteness, whiter than the fleece
Of new-washed sheep on April sod I
O Breath of Life, O Prince of Peace,
O Lamb of God, O Lamb of Grodl
[217]
[218]
POEMS AT HOME
EASTER
THE air is like a butterjfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
MOUNT HOUyENKOCP
MOUNT HOUVENKOPP
SERENE he stands, with mist serenely crowned.
And draws a cloak of trees about his breast.
The thunder roars but cannot break his rest
And from his rugged face the tempests boimd.
He does not heed the angry Kghtning's wound.
The raging blizzard is his harmless guest,
And human Kfe is but a passing jest
To him who sees Time spin the years around.
But fragile souls, in skyey reaches find
High vantage-points and view him from afar.
How low he seems to the ascended mind,
Howi)rief he seems where all things endless are;
This little playmate of the mighty wind.
This young companion of an ancient star.
[2191
POEMS AT HOME
THE HOUSE WITH NOBODY IN IT
WHENEVER I walk to Suffem along the
Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles
broken and black.
I suppose IVe passed it a hundred times, but I al-
ways stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house
with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there
are such things ; '
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and
sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were,
I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffem needs a dozen
panes of glass.
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a
scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines
should be trimmed and tied;
Bat what it needs the mo&t of all is some people liv-
ing inside.
[sao]
THE HOUSE WITH NOBODY IN IT
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw
and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and
give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring
window and door.
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its
block in the store.
But there's nothing moiu'nf ul about it ; it cannot be
sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never
known.
But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life.
That has put its loving wooden arms aroimd a man
and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up
his stumbling feet.
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever
your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffem along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and
looking badcy
[331]
POEMS AT HOME
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and
the shutters fallen apart.
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a
house with a broken heart.
[222]
DAVE LILLY
DAVE LILLY
THERE'S a brook cm the side of Greylock that
used to be full of trout.
But there's nothing there now but minnows; they
say it is all fished oi^t.
I fished there many a Summer day some twenty
years ago,
And I never quit without getting a mess of a dozen
or so.
There was a man, Dave Lilly, who lived on the
North Adams road.
And he spent all his time fishing, while his neigh**
bors reaped and sowed.
He was the luckiest fisherman in the Berkshire hills,
I think.
And when he didn't go fishing he'd sit in the tavern
and drink.
Well, Dave is dead and buried and nobody cares
very much;
They have no use in Greylock for drunkards and
loafers and such.
[228]
POEMS AT HOME
But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as
you could wish;
He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he cer-
tainly could fish.
The other night I was walking up the hiU from
Williamstown
And I came to the brook I mentioned, and I
stopped on the bridge and sat down.
I looked at the blackened water with its little flecks
of white
And I heard it ripple and whisper in the still of the
Summer night.
And after I'd been there a minute it seemed to me
I could feel
The presence of someone near me, and I heard the
hmn of a reel.
And the water was chiu'ned and broken, and some-
thing was brought to land
By a twist and flirt of a shadowy rod in a deft and
shadowy hand.
I scrambled down to the brookside and himted all
about ;
There wasn't a sign of a fisherman; tjiere wasn't
a sign of a trout
[224]
DAVE LILLY
Bttt I heard somebody chuckle behind the hollow
oak
And I got a whiff of tobacco like Lilly used to
smoke.
It's fifteen years, they tell me, since anyone fished
that brook ;
And there's nothing in it but miimows that nibble
the bait off yoiu* hook.
But before the sim has risen and after the moon has
set
I know that it's full of ghostly trout for Lilly's
ghost to get.
I guess I'll go to the tavern and get a bottle of rye
And leave it down by the hollow oak, where Lilly's
ghost went by.
I meant to go up on the hillside and try to find his
grave
And put some flowers on it — ^but this will be better
for Dave.
[225]
POEMS AT HOME
ALABM CLOCKS
¥11 THEN Dawn strides out to wake a dewy
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling ''It is day 1"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But in the city, like a woimded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing.
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervour ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.
[226]
WAVERLEY
WAVERLEY
1814-1914
WHEN on a novers newly printed page
We find a maudlin eulogy of sin,
And read of ways that harlots wander in.
And of sick souls that writhe in helpless rage;
Or when Romance, bespectacled and sage.
Taps on her desk and bids the class begin
To con the problems that have always been
Perplexed mankind's unhappy heritage ;
Then in what robes of honour habited
The laiu*eled wizard of the North appears 1
Who raised Prince Charlie's cohorts from the dead.
Made Rose's mirth and Flora's noble tears.
And formed that siiining legion at whose head
Rides Waverley, triumphant o'er the years 1
[227]
EARLY POEMS
IN A BOOK-SHOP
ALL day I serve among the volumes telling
Old tales of love and war and high romance ;
Good company, God wot, is in them dwelling,
Brave knights who dared to scorn imtoward
chance.
King Arthur — Sidney — Copperfield — ^the daring
And friendly souls of Meredith's bright page —
The Pilgrim on his darksome joiu-ney faring.
And Shakespeare's heroes, great in love and rage.
Fair ladies, too — ^here Beatrice smiling
Through hell leads Dante to the happy stars;
And Heloise, the cruel guards beguiling.
With Abelard makes mock of convent bars.
Yet when night comes I leave these folks with
pleasiu'e
To open Love's great smnmer-scented tome
Witiiin whose pages — ^precious beyond measiu-e —
My own White Flower Lady hath her home.
[231]
EARLY POEMS
SLENDER YOUR HANDS
SLENDER your hands and soft and
white
As petals of moon-kissed roses ;
Yet the grasp of your fingers slight
My passionate heart encloses.
Innocent eyes like delicate spheres
That are bom when day is dying;
Yet the wisdom of all the years
Is in their lovelight lying.
[282]
SLEEP SONG
SLEEP SONG
The Lady World
Is sleeping on her white and cloudy bed.
Like petals fiu'led
Her eyelids close. Beside her dream-filled head
Her lover stands in silver cloak and shoon.
The faithful Moon.
So Love, my Love,
Sleep on, my Love, my Life, be not afraid.
The Moon above
Shall guard the World, and I my little maid.
Yoiu* life, your love, your dreams are mine to
keep.
So sleep, so sleep.
[288]
EARLY POEMS
WHITE BIKD OF LOVE
LITTLE white bird of the summer sky.
Silver against the golden sun^
Over the green of the hills you fly,
You and the sweet, wild air are one.
Glorious sights are in th^tt far place
Reached by your daisy-petal wing.
Rose-coloured meteors dive through space.
Stars made of molten music sing.
StiU, though your quivering eager flight
Reaches the groves by Heaven town.
Where all the angels cry out, ''Alight!
Stop, little bird, come down, come downl
9»
Careless you speed over fields of stars.
Darting through Heaven swift and free ;
Nothing your arrowy passage bars
Back to the earth and badk to me.
Here in the orchard of dream-fruit fair
Out of my dreams is built your nest.
Blossoming dreams all the branches bear.
Fit for my silver dream-bird's rest.
[284]
IdV-a ■»■ -1^ ^'^ -
WHITE BIRD OF LOVE
Here, since they love you, the young stars shine,
Through the white petals come their beams.
Little white love-laden bird of mine.
Let them shine on you through my dreamt.
\
[2M]
EARLY POEMS
TRANSFIGUBATION
IF it should be my task, I being Grod,
From whirling atoms to evolve your mate^
With hands omnipotent I should create
A great-souled hero, with the starlight shod.
The subject worlds should tremble at his nod
And all the angel host upon him wait»
Yet he should leave his pomp and splendid state
And kneel to kiss the ground whereon you trod.
But Grod, who like a little child is wise.
Made me, a common thing of earthly day;
Then bade me go and see within your eyes
The flame of love that bmns more bright than
day.
And as I looked I knew with wild surprise
I was transformed — ^your heart in my heart lay.
[286]
^-J?--,:
BALLADE OF MY LADY'S BEAUTY
BALLADE OF MY LADY'S BEAUTY
SQUIRE ADAM had two wives, they say.
Two wives had he, for his delight.
He kissed and clypt them all the day
And clypt and kissed them all the night.
Now Eve like ocean foam was white
And Lilith roses dipped in wine.
But though they were a goodly sight
No lady is so fair as mine.
To Venus some folk tribute pay
And Queen of Beauty she is hight.
And Sainte Marie the world doth sway
In cenile napery bedight.
My wonderment these twain invite.
Their comeliness it is divine,
And yet I say in their despite.
No lady is so fair as mine.
Dame Helen caused a grievous fray.
For love of her brave men did fight,
The eyes of her made sages fey
And put their hearts in wof ul plight.
[28T]
EARLY POEMS
To her no rhymes will I indite^
For her no garlands will I twine.
Though she be made of flowers and light
No lady is so fair as mine.
l'enyoi
Prince Eros, Lord of lovely might
Who on Olympus dost recline,
Do I not tell the truth aright?
No lady is so fair as mine.
[288]
FOR A BIRTHDAY
FOR A BIRTHDAY
APRIL with her violets.
May and June with roses,
Young July with all her flowers, crimson, gold
and white.
Each in place her tribute setsi.
Each her wreath composes.
Making glad the roadway for the Lady of
Delight.
Birds with many colours gay.
Through the branches flitting.
Sing, to greet my Lady Love, a lusty welcome
song.
Even bees make holiday,
V Hive and honey quitting.
Tremulous and jubilant they join the eager
throng.
Now the road is flower^paved;
Timid fawns are peering
From their pleasant vantage in the roadside's
leafy green.
[289]
EARLY POEMS
All the world in sunlight laved,
Soiows the hour is nearing
That shall bring the golden presence of the
well-loved Queen.
HarkI at last the silver triU
Of a lute is sounding —
Happy August, purple-clad, appears with all
her train.
Sudden sweet the branches fill;
Every heart is bounding;
August comes, the kindly nurse of her who is
toreignl
And now, with proud and valiant gait.
An hundred centaurs come.
Pan rides the foremost one in state;
The waiting crowd grows dumb.
Each centaur wears a jewelled thong
And harness bright of sheen ;
They draw through surging floods of song
The carriage of the Queen I
''Hail I Hail I Hail I to the Queen in her moonstone
carl
Haill Haill Haill to the Lady whose slaves we arel
[240]
GR ABIT ATI ON'. (
FOR A BIRTHDAY
We of the meadows, the rocks and the hills,
Dwellers in oceans and rivers and rills,
Beasts of the forests and birds of the air.
Linnet and butterfly, lion and bear,
Daisy and daffodiU, spruce-tree and flr,
yield to our Queen and do homage to hert
!ail I Hail I Hail I we welcome thy royal sway I
!aill Hail I Hail I O Queen, on this festal day I
So all the world kneels down to you,
And all things are your own ;
Now let a htmible rhymer sue
Before your crystal throne.
Fair Queen, at your rose-petal feet
Bid me to live and die I
Not all your world of lovers, Sweet,
Can love so much as I.
[Ml]
r
I
t
>
EARLY POEMS
WAYFARERS
UNDERNEATH the orchard trees lies a
gypsy sleeping^
Tattered cloak and swarthy face and shaggy
moonlit hair;
One brown hand his crazy fiddle in its grasp is keep-
ing.
Through the Land of Dreams he strolls and sings
his lore songs there.
Up above the apple blossoms where the stars are
shining,
Free and careless wandering among the clouds
he goes.
Singing of his lady-love and for her pleasure twin-
ing
Wreaths of Heaven flowers, violet and golden
rose.
In his sleep he stirs, and wakes to find his love be-
side him.
Pours his load of Dreamland blooms before her
silver feet,
[242]
WAYFARERS
Takes her in his arms and as her soft brown tresses
hide him
Both together fare to Dreamland up the star-
paved street.
t.. ■;.
[248]
EARLY POEMS
PRINCESS BALLADE
NEVER a horn sounds in Sherwood tp-night.
Friar Tuck's drinking Olympian ale,
Little John's wandered away from our sight,
Robin Hood's bow hangs unused on its nail.
Even the moon has grown weary and pale
Sick for the glint of Maid Marian's hair.
But there is one joy on moimtain and dale,
Fairies abound all the time, everywhere I
Saints hare attacked them with sacredest might.
They could not shatter their gossamer mail;
Steam-driven engines can never affright
Fairies who dance in their spark-sprinkled trail.
Still for a warning the sad Banshees wail.
Still are the Leprechaims ready to bear
Purses of gold to their captors for bail;
aboimd all the time, everywhere!
Oberon, king of the realms of delight.
May your domain over us never fail.
Mab, as a rainbow-hued butterfly bright.
Yours is the glory that age cannot stale.
[244]
PRINCESS BALLADE
When we are planted down under the shale.
Fairy-folk, drop a few daffodils there.
Comfort our souls in the Stygian vale ;
Fairies abound all the time, everywhere.
l^'envoi
White Flower Princess, though sophisters
Let us be glad in faith that we share.
None shall the Good People safely assail;
Fairies abound all the time, everywhere I
[2«]
BARLT POEMS
LULLABY FOR A BABY FAIRY
NIGHT is over; tiirough the clover globes of
crystal shine;
Birds are calling; sunlight falling on the wet green
vine.
Little wings must folded lie, little lips be still
While the sun is in the sky, over Fairy Hill.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
Baby with buttercup hair,
Grolden rays
Into the violet creep.
Dream, dream deep ;
t)ream of the night-revels fair.
Daylight stays ;
Sleep, little fairy child, sleep.
Rest in daytime; night is playtime, all good fairies
know.
Under sighing grasses lying, off to slumber go.
Night will come with stars agleam, lilies in her
hand.
Calling you from Hills of Dream back to Fairy-
land.
[246]
LULLABY FOR A BABY FAIRY
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Baby with buttercup hair;
Grolden rays
Into the violet creep.
Dream, dream deep ;
Dream of the night-revels fair.
Daylight stays ;
Sleep, little fairy child, sleep.
[MT]
EARLY POEMS
A DEAD POET
FAIR Death, kind Death, it was a gracious deed
To take that weary vagrant to thy breast.
Love, Song and Wine had he, and but one need —
Rest.
C24S]
THE MAD FIDDLER
THE MAD FTODLER
I SLEEP beneath a bracken sheet
In sunlight or in rain.
The road dust bums my naked feet,
The sunrays sear my braiii;
But children love my fiddle's sound
And if a lad be straying.
His mother knows he may be found
Where old Mad Larry's playing.
O fiddle, let us follow, follow.
Till we see my Eileen's face,
Through the moonlight like a swallow
Off she flew to some far place.
O, did you ever love a lass?
I loved a lass one day.
And she would lie upon the grass
And sing while I would play.
She was a cruel, lovely thing.
Nor heart nor soul have I,
For Eileen took them that soft spring
When she flew to the sky.
[240]
EARLY POEMS
So fiddle, let us f oUow, follow,
Till we see my Eileen's face.
Through the moonlight like a swallow
0£F she flew to some far place.
[200]
THE GRASS IN MADISON SQUABE
THE GRASS IN MADISON SQUARE
THE pleasant turf is dried and marred and
seared.
The grass is dead.
No soft green shoot, by rain and sunshine reared.
Lifts up its head.
I think the grass that made the park so gay
In early spring
Now decks the lawns of Heaven where babies play
And dance and sing.
And poor old vagabonds who now have left
The dusty street.
Find fields of which they were in life bereft.
Beneath their feet.
[251J
EARLY POEMS
N
SAID THE ROSE
O flower hath so fair a face as this pale love of
mine;
When he bends down to kiss my heart, my petals
try to twine
About his lips to hold them fast. He is so vfery f air.
My lover with the pale, sad face and forest-fragrant
I think it is a pleasant place, tiiis garden where I
grow,
With gravel walks and grassy mounds and crosses
in a row.
There is no toil nor worry here, nor clatter of the
street.
And here each night my lover comes, pale, sad and
very sweet.
He never heeds the violets or lilies tall and white ;
I am his love, his only love, his Flower of Delight;
And often when the cold moonbeams are lying all
around
My lover kneels the whole night through beside me
on the groimd.
[252]
SAID THE ROSE
How can I miss the sunshine-laden breezes of the
south
When all my heart is burning with the kisses of his
mouth?
How can I miss the coming of the comfort-bringing
rain
When his hot tears are fOling me with heaven-sweet
love-pain?
There is a jealous little bird that envies me my love.
He sings this bitter, bitter song from his brown nest
above :
* Was ever yet a mortal man who wed a flower wife?
He loves the girl down in your roots whose dead
breast gives you life.'
99
little bird, O jealous bird, fly o£P and cease your
chatter I
My lover is my lover, and what can a dead girl
matter?
In his hot kisses and sweet tears I shall my petab
steep ;
1 am his love, his only love, I have his heart to keep.
[258]
EARLY POEMS
METAMORPHOSIS
HE was an evil thing to
Of joy his mouth was desolate;
His body was a stunted tree.
His eyes were pools of lust and hate.
Now silverly the linnet sings
On leaves that from his temples start.
And gay the yellow crocus springs
From the rich clod that was his heart.
[254]
FOR A CHILD
FOR A CHILD
f
HIS mind has neither need nor power to know
The foolish things that men call right and
»
wrong.
For him the streams of pleasant love-wind flow.
For him the mystic, sleep-compelling song.
Through love he rules his love-made miiverse.
And sees with eyes by ignorance made keen
The f amis and elves whom older eyes disperse,
Great Pan and all the fairies with their queen.
King gods, I pray, bestow on him this dole.
Not wisdom, wealth, nor mighty deeds to do,
But let him keep his happy pagan soul.
The poet-vision, simple, free and ttrue.
To hunt the rainbow-gold and phantom lights,
And meet with dryads on the wooded heights.
[iW]
EARLY POEMS
THE CLOUDED SUN
(ToA. S.)
IT is not good for poets to grow old.
For they serve Death that loves and Love that
kills;
And Love and Death, enthroned above the hills.
Call back their faithful servants to the fold
Before Age makes them passionless and cold.
Therefore it is that no more sorry thing
Can shut the simlight from the thirsty grass
Than some grey head through which no longer
pass
Wild dreams more lively than the scent of Spring
To fire the blood and make the glad ptiouth sing.
Far happier he, who, young and full of pride
And radiant with the glory of the sun.
Leaves earth before his singing time is done.
All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide^^
His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died.
Then through the words wherein his spirit dwells
The world may see his yoimg impetuous face
Unmarred by Time, with undiminished grace;
While memory no piteous story tells
Of barren days, stale loves and broken spells.
[256]
THE CLOUDED SUN
Brother and Master, we are wed with woe.
Yea, Grief 's funereal cloud it is that hovers
About the head of us, thy mournful lovers.
Uncomf orted and sick with pain we go.
Dust on our brows and at our hearts the snow.
The London lights flare on the chattering street,
Young men and maidens Ipve and dance and die ;
Wine flows, and the perfumes float up to the sky.
Once thou couldst feel that this was very sweet.
Now thou art still — ^mouth, hands and weary feet.
O subtle mouth, whereon the Sphinx has placed
The smile of those she kisses at their birth.
Sing once again, for Spring has thrilled the eartlu
Nay, thou art dumb. Not even April's taste
Is sweet to thee in thy live coffin cased.
There is no harsher tragedy than this —
That thou, who f eltest as no man before
Scent, colour, taste and sound and didst outpour
For us rich draughts of thine enchanted bliss
Shouldst be plunged down this cruel black abyss.
[257]
EARLY POEMS
Brotho: and Master, if our love could free
Thy flamebome spirit from its leaden chain.
Thou shoiildst rise up from this sad house of pain.
Be young and fair as thou wast wont to be,
And strong with joy as is the boundless sea.
Brother and Master, at thy feet we lay
These roses, red as lips that thou hast sung.
To mingk with the green and fragrant bay,
And cypress wreaths above thy head are hung.
We kneel awhile, tiien turn in tears away.
[M8]
THE POET'S EPITAPH
THE POET'S EPITAPH
DREAMS fade with morning light,
Niever a mom for thee.
Dreamer of dreams, good-night.
Over our earthly sight
Shadows of woe must be ;
Dreams fade with morning light.
Soldiers awake to fight —
Thou art from strife set free,
Dreamer of dreams, good-night.
Day breaketh, cruel, white.
Lovely the forms that flee ;
Dreams fade with morning light.
Thine is the sure delight.
Sleep-visions stiU to see,
Dreamer of dreams, good-night.
Pity us from thy height,
Dawn-haimted slaves are we;
Dreams fade with morning light.
Dreamer of dreams, good-night.
[259]
EARLY POEMS
BEAUTY'S HAIR
A GLEAM of light across the night,
I know that you are there;
The heavens show the lovely glow
Of your transcendent hair.
Your luminous, miraculous, and morning-
coloured
I'll take my silver javelin
And point it with a star.
For I have vowed to climb a cloud
And reach to where you are.
My javelin's barb shall pierce your hair
And pin it to the sky,
And I will run to the island sun
Where captive you will lie,
And then I shall dare to touch your hair.
To steal a tress of your magic hair,
And bring to the world a tress of hair
And win the world thereby.
<•
Or shall I put on a green-sea cloak
With sunset laces trimmed.
And shine so gay that the dawn will say
That her radiance is dimmed?
There never was a lover could shine more fair
Than I in my cloak will shine ;
[260]
BEAUTY'S HAIR
And all for the sake of your merry hair^
lYour whimsical, perilous, golden hair.
Your lovely, terrihle, golden hair,
More sweet than love or wine.
A twisted bit of silver
Fell down and bruised my face.
What was it broke my broidered doak,
And tore the sunset lace?
I must be clad in sorrow
Because you are so gay,
And close my eyes if I would see
A whiter light than day.
So lofty is your golden hair,
I cannot climb to touch your hair,
I must kneel down to find your hair
Upon the trampled way.
[261]
EARLY POEMS
THE WAY OF LOVE
(An Old Legend)
WHEN darkness hovers over earth
And day gives place to night.
Then lovers see the Milky Way
Gleam mystically bright,
And calling it the Way of Love
They hail it with delight.
She was a lady wondrous f air,
A right brave lover he.
And sooth they suffered grievous pain
And sorrowed mightily,
For they were parted during life
By leagues of land and sea.
She died. Then Death came to the man.
He met him joyfully,
And said, ''Thou Angel Death, well met I
Quick, do thy will with me.
That I may haste to greet my love
In Heaven^s company."
[262]
THE WAY OF LOVE
Now on one side of Heaven he dwelt
And on the other, she ;
And broad between them stretched sheer space
Whereon no way might be.
The empty, yawning, awful depth,
Unplumbed infinity.
The deathless spheric melody
Came gently to his ear.
And diilcet notes, the harmonies
Of Seraphs chanting near.
He heeded not for listening
His lady's voice to hear.
The Saints and Martyrs romid him ranged
A goodly company.
The Virgin, robed in radiance.
The Holy Trinity.
He heeded not, but strained his eyes
His lady's face to see.
At last from far across the void
Her voice came, faint and sweet.
The bright-hued walls of Paradise
Did the glad sound repeat ;
Tlie distant stars on which she stood
Shone bright beneath her feet.
[268]
EARLY POEMS
'Dear Love/' she said, "Oh, come to me I
I cannot see your face.
O will not Lord Christ grant to us
To cross this sea of space?"
Then thrilled his heart with Love's own might.
He answered, by Love's grace.
''The world is wide, and Heaven is wide^
From me to thee is far,
Alas I across Infinity
No passageways there are.
Sweetheart, I'll make my way to thee,
I'll build it, star by star 1"
Through all the curving vault of sky
His lusty blows rang out.
He smote the jewel-studded walls
And with a mighty shout
He tore the gleaming masonry
And posts that stood about.
He strove to build a massive bridge
That shoiild the chasm span.
With heart upheld by hope and love
His great task he began.
And toiled and laboured doughtily
To work his God-like plan,
[264]
THE WAY OF LOVE
He took the heavy beams of gold
That round him he did see ;
The beryl, jacinth, sardius,
That shone so brilliantly.
And no fair jewel would he spare
So zealously worked he.
He stole the gorgeous tinted stuffs
Whereof are sunsets made.
And his rude, grasping, eager hands
On little stars he laid;
To rob Grod's sacred treasure-house
He was no whit afraid.
And so for centuries he worked*
Across the void at last
Abridgeofpredou^moUdidsbrnd'
Completed, strong and fast.
So now the faithful lovers met
And all their woe was past.
But soon a shining angel guard
Sped to the throne of gold
And said, "Lord, see yon new-made bridge,
A mortal, overbold,
Has built it, scorning thy desire I'*
Straightway the tale he told.
[265]
EARLY POEMS
Then said: ^^Now, Master^ Thou mayst see
The thing that has been wrought.
Speak, then, the word, stretch forth Thine hand
That with the speed of thought
This poor presumptuous work may fall
And crumble into naught/'
Grod looked upon the angel then
And on the bridge below.
Then with His smile of majesty
He said: "Let aU things know,
This bridge, which has by Love been built,
I will not overthrow."
When darkness hovers over earth
And day gives place to night.
Then lovers see the Milky Way
Gleam mystically bright.
And calling it the Way of Love,
They hail it with delight.
[2(J6]
CHEVELY CROSSING
CHEVELY CROSSING
THERE two roads cross by Chevely town
A man is lying dead.
Tlie rumbling wains of scented hay
Roll over his fair head ;
A stake is driven through his hearty
For his own blood he shed.
Among the pleasant flower-stars
By God's own garden gate,
A little maid fresh come from earth
One summer night did wait ;
Her poppy mouth dropped down with fear.
With fear her eyes were great.
The angels saw her sinless face.
The gate was opened wide.
She only shook her dawn-crowned head
And would not come inside.
She was alone, and so afraid—
' She hid her face and cried.
EARLY POEMS
Her tears dropped down like sun-filled rain
Through stars and starless spaoe»
Until at last in Chevely town
Where in a moonlit place
Her lover knelt upon her ^ave^
They f eD upon his f aoe.
Said he, "My love, my only love,
My Elena, my Sweet I
Through what wild ways of mystery
Have strayed your little feet?
Alone, alone this lonely night
Where only spirits meet I
"It is not my bleak desert life
That turns my heart to lead,
Not for my empty amis I mourn.
Nor for my loveless bed;
But that you wander forth alone
On heights I may not tread.
"If I could stand beside you now.
Sin-burdened though I be,
I'd bear you through the trackless ways
From fear and danger free.
Not God himself could daunt the strong
Undying love of me I ^
[268]
CHEVELY CROSSING
"Though Heaven is a pleasant place»
What joy for you is there? /
Who tread the jewelled streets alone
Without my heart to share
Each throb of yoiu- heart, and my arm
Around you, O my Fair I
"I hear your sobbing in the wind.
And in the simmier rain
I feel your tears. My heart is pierced
With your sad, lonely pain.
My Love I My only Love I I come I
You shall not call in vainl"
Where two roads cross by Chevely town
A man is lying dead.
The rumbling wains of scented hay
Roll over his fair head ;
A stake is driven through his hearty
For his own blood he shed.
L.
r
[269]
EARLY POEMS
[270]
OTHER LOVER
I'M home from off the stormy sea,
And down the street
The folk come out to welcome me
On eager feet.
O neighbours, Grod be with you all.
But for my true love I must call;
She lingers in her father's hall
So shy, so sweet !
Here is a string of milky pearls
For her to wear.
An amber comb to match the curls
Of her bright hair.
O neighbours, do not crowd me sol
Stand by ! stand by ! for I must go
To put on my love's hand of snow
This gold ring fair.
Grood dame, why do you block the way
And shake your head?
Must all the things you have to say
Just now be said?
O neighboiu"S, let me pass — ^but why —
My God, what makes you women cry?
Come tell me that I too may die I
Is my love dead?
THE OTHER LOVER
"Nay, Marjorie's a living thing.
And fair and strong.
Yet did you wait to give your ring
A year too long.
To seek her love there came the Moon;
Now Mar jorie at night and noon
Is chained and sits alone to croon
The Moon's love-song."
[«71]
1
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
This book is due on the last DATE stamped below.
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